The same feat is already bestowed on human copies. Every birth is the duplication of genetic material, and the economic system in place is careless when human lives are at stake. Donald Trump's attitude towards refugees is only a symptom of that.
Lot's of modern art(as in temporally, not stylistically) can be pretty much exactly recreated, but no one values those copies anywhere near what they do the original.
The point of the project is not to demonstrate if copying is right or wrong, it is to demonstrate that the value given to copies is blatantly incorrect because the industry players see every copy as a lost sale, and ask for compensation on that basis.
Perhaps a better approach than trying to figure a market value for the copies would be to simply assign a presumed value in cases where a market has not established a value. Say, a buck per copy of a pirated song.
My thought is to sidestep the impossible process of computing a value, by assigning a presumptive value, e.g., one dollar per copy. That way, everybody knows the score.
It's my understanding that a per-use presumptive value is how performance rights for copyrighted songs are handled. If your band plays "Freebird" in a public venue that does not have a performance license, the liability is a certain fixed amount regardless of the size of the audience, or how much beer got sold as a result of your performance.
This would be completely logical if MP3s from Taylor Swift were found organically in nature everywhere we looked. Unfortunately (or fortunately), this isn't the case, so there are no "natural rights" to be asserted here, as is the case with things like food, water, and shelter.
There is a natural right to freely copy information. Our civilization is based on our ability to tell young people the stories we heard from our elders. And we are part of nature.
So, in your opinion, someone taking part in commerce is completely justified in simply copying software without paying a dime to the author, and using that software to then, in turn, make money ? Who gets to decide when one person's rights trump another person's rights ?
This has never really been about whether or not it's okay to copy and use free what someone else created. This is why even companies like Napster eventually reached out to artists.
It's about the latter, that the artists didn't "allow to copy". Guess what? They can't stop people from copying digital material, ever, regardless of how much moralizing the industry backers do. This is happening/has happened, so they need to get on board.
No, harming a specific type of artist who insists on maintaining a 30, 40, 50 year old business model.
The biggest stars on the planet have their music on YouTube for free, and I'm sure their music is downloaded proportionately more as well. I'm talking about the Adeles, the Taylor Swifts, the Justin Biebers, the Drakes, the Wiz Khalifas. They are hardly harmed. They've "grown up" in the digital world, and have built their careers around it.
And it isn't the "middle class" being harmed, either. I can have an album up on iTunes, or any other number of platforms, by tomorrow. At what point in history have independent artists have access to that sort of global reach and distribution? This is a great time to be a musician.
1) YouTube videos from major distributors are monetized (Vevo), and user-contributed versions are often taken down. So, they are still making money while also promoting the artist and maintaining control over the product.
Actually you could say this project shows how bad copying something is. Why do I want to create something that could be copied? Why should I create a movie or a piece of software when by nature of being copyable means it's worthless?
Torrentfreak should stick to direct arguments for why piracy should be allowed, and stop with the analogies. I've seen a bunch of analogies from them, and they all break down given the slightest thought. They may be good for getting shares and views. They aren't good for convincing thinking individuals.
(I'm thinking of the recent article https://torrentfreak.com/when-authors-demand-payment-for-eve..., which doesn't consider the obvious point that authors make it a condition of sale to not copy it. Almost every direct editorial I've seen from them has similar gaping flaws. This one, for example, completely misses the problem with copies, which is distribution to people who haven't paid.)
They're not making an analogy in this article. They're reporting on someone's satirical art piece, which is itself a commentary on the argument that copyright users have used in the courts (that one copy = one lost sale). Which is exactly in line with TorrentFreak's stated objective, reporting on all things related to file sharing.
The art piece is not -making- an analogy. It is -mocking- a line of reasoning used by the copyright industry.
That is, the copyright industry comes up with numbers about how badly file sharing hurts their numbers by counting one download, that is, one copy, as a lost sale. They've extended that analogy, in fact, to try and prevent people from ripping their own music, DVDs, etc (it's still technically illegal to copy your own DVD to your hard drive, for your own viewing).
This is an art piece to show how nonsensical that argument is, that a copy does not equate to a lost sale.
It's mocking it by making a parody, and there's an analogy between the parody and the original. As that analogy breaks down,the parody becomes less meaningful. You could not call it an analogy if you want, it's just semantics.
>They've extended that analogy, in fact, to try and prevent people from ripping their own music, DVDs, etc
They want to prevent people from being able to upload pirated DVDs. They couldn't care less whether you rip them for yourselves, afaik, but they want to ban the tools to do so because they're also used by pirates.
If I'm wrong, do you have an example of when they tried to stop self-copying for its own sake?
Yes; it's called the DMCA's anti-copyright circumvention.
You seem to be saying such laws and lobbying is only there to prevent people from being able to upload pirated DVDs, but the obvious problem there is such actions -are already illegal-. Their incentive may be to prevent piracy, but their actions are very clearly to prevent -anyone- from ripping their legally purchased media. They will not -prosecute- an individual who never uploaded something, no, but they have -no- problem with making it illegal and going after anyone who would produce the tools to allow it to happen.
Their actions, and the rationales they use to justify it, are the problem, not their incentives. I am in complete -agreement- with their incentives; file sharing is certainly a threat to their business model, and they either need to change business model or try and stamp it out. But in trying to stamp it out they are effectively also trying to stamp out things that I should be able to do (and legally may be both allowed to do, and not allowed to do; I'm legally allowed to rip my content, but not legally allowed to circumvent DRM to do it).
But we're digressing. My point was, and still is, simply that there is no analogy being made by the article, nor Sunde; the analogy (or whatever you want to call it; it's just semantics) is being made by the copyright industry.
Agreed, in mocking it they're straining it a bit, but the point is that they're mocking a terrible argument that the copyright industry has made to make their case in both courts of law and courts of public opinion. Same as the "You Wouldn't Download A Car!" meme was made to mock their "You Wouldn't Steal A Car!" ad campaign.
I'm not sure if there's any relevant point of fact we disagree on now.
The only point I'd make is that the copyright industry hasn't claimed "every copy is a lost sale", they've claimed that some copies are lost sales. Often, the question is whether the "main purpose" of a technology is for illegal purposes, and if the answer was yes, it wouldn't be allowed, even if there were legitimate uses.
Regardless, "the analogy breaks down here, therefore the analogy isn't valid anywhere" is not a valid argument. To the extent the parody is doing that, it's wrong.
Stretching the analogy to the point of breaking is actually a very useful bit of rhetoric when one side insists on using an analogy.
That is, when the copyright industry says "sharing these files is hurting us, we must make it illegal to make copies" (because that is what they lobby for, anti-DRM circumvention and the like), showing that making copies -is not what hurts your business model- is a worthwhile goal, in both courts of law and courts of public opinion.
The initial analogy is not a valid argument; taking it to the breaking point and by doing so showing that the analogy is too simplistic to be accurate, is a valid response.
"On the contrary, he believes that piracy positively affects sales ... The economics work differently in a global networked society. But the industries will not change. That’s why we need to take them down ..."
Personally, I think there are better ways than this. For example, he would build these products and give them away. Oh wait ... that's work.
Here's a crazy thought experiment. Instead of copying some music track, how about copying a dollar bill? What happens to the dollar bill?
Instead of sites that distribute torrent files, we'll have sites that distribute blueprints on how to build a printer that can print out perfect copies of dollar bills. Totally not illegal!
Of course, in the same way that owning a music track makes me more likely to go out and buy said music track, owning a copied dollar bill makes me more likely to go out and actually work to earn a real dollar bill. So in a sense, the same way copying music helps the music industry, copying dollars helps the economy!
Exactly. So the person's example seems to hold: duplicating dollars isn't a good idea economically, and would have a negative impact like duplicating mp4 movies - it reduces the value of the thing being duplicated.
So in your analogy what about the guy who wants a dollar bill but because of he lives outside the United States can't "go out and actually work to earn a real dollar bill"?
Right now only the united states is allowed to copy dollar bills, if you live outside of the united states you'd have to go into these underground exchange markets to get your dollars.
The united states government needs to get with the times. Digital distribution is the wave of the future. Why should the united states be the sole entity allowed to print dollar bills? If people from other countries need US dollar bills then, they should have the right to print out dollar bills.
There's a new thing emerging on the piracy scene called a superdollar. See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar. North Korea is, apparently, on the tip of the spear for this new technology; bravely paving the way of a glorious future! The US needs stop using old archaic ways of distributing money and get with the program! If the world was more like North Korea, the world would be a better place.
"Right now only the united states is allowed to copy dollar bills"
Usually anyone can copy currency as long as you clearly indicate that it is a copy.
"The united states government needs to get with the times. Digital distribution is the wave of the future. Why should the united states be the sole entity allowed to print dollar bills?"
Not a unreasonable question if you equate "print dollar bills" with issuing currency, which is what they actually do.
"If the world was more like North Korea, the world would be a better place"
Is it really that much fun to make these sarcastic ignorant comparisons rather than discuss the real issues and maybe learn something?
Not really relevant since bills are protected as a result of laws regarding forgery and fraud, not copyright. It's a lazy rebuttal without foundation in discourse or law.
Gozo, why discuss written laws? Written laws are fabrications made to infuse artificial restrictions on things that exist in reality. Let's talk about intrinsic laws. Like the law of gravity or the Law Of Supply And Demand:
When you increase demand you increase the value of a product, when you increase supply you decrease the value of a product. Basic economics. Let's take this concept and apply it to money. If you print money you increase the money supply. When you increase the money supply you decrease the value of money.
Thus the action of counterfeiting is actually theft. By printing money you lower the value of other peoples' money and thus you are stealing value from other people. That's why counterfeiting is bad. Written laws on forgery and fraud don't cause this phenomenon they are a consequence of it.
The same academic principle works for piracy. Get it? You copy a product you devalue the product by increasing supply. These are principles of Basic economics and Intrinsic law that permeates the fabric of reality. In essence: When you pirate a product you are stealing it, there is no way around it.
Why is it not ok to pirate money but it's totally ok to pirate music? I'll tell you why. The issue touches the roots of humanity's morally ambiguous nature: When you pirate money, you harm everyone who owns money and face the ire of the entire population.
When you pirate music you harm only the creator of the music and you probably got a lot of friends who do the same thing. Significantly easier to do from an ethical standpoint. But how do you face yourself? What does a typical weak, cowardly human tell himself when he commits a crime? A typical human will create an overly-complicated and sophisticated logical delusion in order to justify the action to himself. Stupid logic like "downloading an mp3 makes me more likely to buy the track" are typical examples. In fact, you can likely witness a version of this overly-complicated logic in your response to this post.
Is that enough discourse for you? Yours is the lazy rebuttable without foundation in reality.
You clearly don't have much experience with debating copyright instead your trying to shoehorn in your argument where they don't make sense.
"You copy a product you devalue the product by increasing supply"
A digital product already has infinite supply. The question isn't if copying affects supply, but if it affects demand. If someone copy something they would never have bought the economic damage to the author is theoretically zero. Copyright doesn't even deal with "increasing supply" as a intrinsic thing. If you spend year creating recipes for a restaurant that become successful and someone opens a restaurant next door serving the same things (and thereby increasing supply) the original restaurant has little to no copyright claim. The same is true in other fields. Even universal human rights doesn't deal with intellectual property in this way. There's simply little basis for this view.
"When you pirate music you harm only the creator of the music"
That you "only harm the creator" is objectively false, since even if you prescribe to great harm being done by piracy it's not only the creator, but the rightsholder that gets hurt.
"What does a typical weak, cowardly human tell himself when he commits a crime?"
It's when you don't have good arguments nor is well read you have to resort to this type of name calling.
"Yours is the lazy rebuttable without foundation in reality"
My arguments are absolutely based in the current discourse.
>It's when you don't have good arguments nor is well read you have to resort to this type of name calling.
You called me ignorant directly and you started it. "Ignorant" is a highly charged word that will ignite hostility. Do you start debates with that word in real life? Perhaps if you had experience with "copyright debate" you'd know that things won't end well when you start something with that word. Maybe you're just too ignorant to realize that. I never directly called you anything. Besides, there's a difference between fact-calling and name-calling in which case what I'm doing is more closer to the former.
>You clearly don't have much experience with debating copyright
I'm not talking about copyright. I started the topic and that topic dictates the terms of this debate. The topic was a sarcastic example about piracy and theft in terms of supply, demand and value. It was not at all about copyright law. When you talk about human law you deal with controversial topics like whether a pattern of sound needs to be copyrighted or whether a recipe needs to be copyrighted. I'm not dealing with any of those ambiguities. I am dealing with what happens in economics when you pirate something. What happens when you pirate money and what happens when you pirate software. I am not talking about written law.
>My arguments are absolutely based in the current discourse.
Possibly based on discourse but not based on reality and therefore off topic.
>If someone copy something they would never have bought the economic damage to the author is theoretically zero.
What dream world do you live in where you think this is all that happens with piracy? Many people also copy things that they would have bought in the first place.
>A digital product already has infinite supply.
And as such, the product is usually worthless unless distribution/supply is artificially restricted (Netflix, DRM, etc.)
> Copyright doesn't even deal with "increasing supply" as a intrinsic thing.
Who cares? Increasing supply is a part of reality, and that is what I'm talking about.
>If you spend year creating recipes for a restaurant that become successful and someone opens a restaurant next door serving the same things (and thereby increasing supply) the original restaurant has little to no copyright claim
Why are their secret recipes? Why do people hide these things? Because restricting supply increases VALUE. Copyright law is an issue that is separate from this phenomenon.
"You called me ignorant directly and you started it"
I didn't call you ignorant, so much as your argument that involved currency and north korea. But I realize it's a fine line and should have used a different word. Not that you are taking the high road here either.
"The topic was a sarcastic example about piracy and theft in terms of supply, demand and value. It was not at all about copyright law."
How is piracy and "theft" not about copyright law? If you're not breaking copyright law it's not piracy.
"Possibly based on discourse but not based on reality and therefore off topic"
I obviously don't think so. My kind of arguments are the ones being discussed at conferences, in books, documentaries and papers.
"What dream world do you live in where you think this is all that happens with piracy? Many people also copy things that they would have bought in the first place."
There's a reason I used the word "theoretically". Still a 14 year old is seldom going to buy a $4000 program and companies sometimes recognizes these scenarios. Microsoft did in China for instance.
"Who cares? Increasing supply is a part of reality, and that is what I'm talking about."
I don't see how increasing supply in general is relevant. If I seed some flowers I'm increasing the supply of flowers, but few people would see that as a negative thing. If there were no copyright, like in (to some extent) fashion or cooking, copying would be part of reality and there would be little point to compare it to copying currency.
>Not that you are taking the high road here either.
You punch someone in the face you think there's going to be any high road? Guess what, you start shit, people react, you make enemies.
>How is piracy and "theft" not about copyright law? If you're not breaking copyright law it's not piracy.
It's because humans are born with the ability to moralize and differentiate from right and wrong without the need for written law. Everybody knows what theft is without referencing copyright law. What I am talking about in my argument is how the theft of value occurs according to the intrinsic law of supply and demand; and the theft of value is morally wrong according to common sense, no need to refer to copyright law.
Let's put it this way... If you rip off someone's secret recipe copyright law may say that you're not wrong, but your conscious will tell you that you're an ass.
>I obviously don't think so. My kind of arguments are the ones being discussed at conferences, in books, documentaries and papers.
Good for you, but guess what, those things discussed in conferences? If it's about copyright law, it's off topic.
>There's a reason I used the word "theoretically". Still a 14 year old is seldom going to buy a $4000 program and companies sometimes recognizes these scenarios. Microsoft did in China for instance.
Theories are used to speculate about the unknown or things not directly observed. When evidence and common sense flies in the face of theory, the theory becomes shit and a new theory is needed. Why even present a flawed theory? Either way it doesn't even matter if a 14 y/o pirates a $4000 program he would never buy, the problem is when someone pirates something they would otherwise buy which I assure you happens a lot.
>I don't see how increasing supply in general is relevant. If I seed some flowers I'm increasing the supply of flowers, but few people would see that as a negative thing. If there were no copyright, like in (to some extent) fashion or cooking, copying would be part of reality and there would be little point to compare it to copying currency.
You can't form a business around products with unlimited supply because those products are worthless. Cooking and fashion are supply limited products. Companies use brand names, trade secrecy and manufacturing techniques that require enormous capital to protect and restrict supply. Physical limits like finite materials time, and effort also serve to restrict supply. Such is the nature of physical products, and it is because of this limit in supply that a business can be formed around it. If there was a physical product with virtually unlimited supply it would be fundamentally impossible to form a business around it.
Is there a physical product in this world that has almost unlimited supply? Yes. Air. How many business are formed around selling air? Almost none. Although, I know of one such business in canada that sells bottled clean air to people living in polluted cities in china. The only reason why this business can exist is because china has a "restricted" supply of clean air.
Information unlike physical products is not supply limited. We can copy information at a drop of a dime. Without laws, DRM or artificial supply restrictions programmed into the product itself; music, software and movies would be as worthless as the air you breath. And I said before you can't form a business around something with unlimited supply.
I made no threat. I'm just saying when you use hostile language people will react emotionally and hate you for it. This is common human behavior if you're familiar with it.
If you believe I made a threat, quote me on it. I clearly did no such thing.
> Here's a crazy thought experiment. Instead of copying some music track, how about copying a dollar bill? What happens to the dollar bill?
We don't need all the baggage of monetary policy here. Let's get to the heart of what you're after: How about copying a gift certificate?
The only point you're making is that it's possible for a forged copy to be the instrument of a fraud. When you redeem the forged gift certificate you're effectively stealing inventory from the store.
So you're really just making the spurious claim that copying is stealing, using a detour through currency forgery to disguise the nature of your claim.
> So in a sense, the same way copying music helps the music industry, copying dollars helps the economy!
Do you understand why the government prints money during a recession?
>Do you understand why the government prints money during a recession?
Yes I do! Do you? The term is called quantitative easing and it is a mechanism of last resort! Amazing! And totally irrelevant to the debate! Speaking of irrelevancy, do you know what the government usually does during a recession before they resort to actually printing money? If you do you win!
>So you're really just making the spurious claim that copying is stealing, using a detour through currency forgery to disguise the nature of your claim.
No I'm not! No disguises. I am illustrating an isomorphism. Copying is stealing and the concept is EXACTLY the same as printing money.
> Yes I do! Do you? The term is called quantitative easing and it is a mechanism of last resort! Amazing! And totally irrelevant to the debate!
So you understand how quantitative easing stimulates the economy but you don't see the analogy to creating more copies of information goods?
> Speaking of irrelevancy, do you know what the government usually does during a recession before they resort to actually printing money? If you do you win!
They... lower taxes and increase/maintain government spending. Which you can't do at the same time as each other without either borrowing or creating money, and government borrowing money increases interest rates, hence the printing.
> No I'm not! No disguises. I am illustrating an isomorphism. Copying is stealing and the concept is EXACTLY the same as printing money.
Then just claim copying is stealing directly so people can better understand why you're wrong. The analogy is unnecessary and it doesn't even hold in that context.
If you use forged currency to "buy" a loaf of bread, the store is out one loaf of bread. If you copy some information the store's balance sheet is unchanged. The two are not equivalent and trying to ignore the difference is exactly what leads to the crazy conclusions the law makes about the calculation of damages for copyright infringement.
Notice that this is not saying that copyright infringement causes no damages. It is merely saying that the damages are not equal to the cost of the product, unlike the situation of an actual theft.
I'm not sure you would even like a direct analogy to theft. A store buys a loaf of bread for $1 and aims to sells it for $1.50 (or whatever). If you steal it, the loss they take on their books is their cost, not the retail price. Calculating damages that way wouldn't be very favorable to copyright holders.
>So you understand how quantitative easing stimulates the economy but you don't see the analogy to creating more copies of information goods?
Quantitative easing is a very dangerous last resort action and it's done in a very controlled way. It is also RARELY executed because printing money is really bad. Look up runaway inflation in argentina for more information.
If executed successfully QE will come with an inflationary cost that affects anyone who owns money in the united states.
I don't see the analogy between QE and piracy because no such analogy exists, you don't jump start a business by pirating it's software, never seen it happen. Although, I do see the analogy between piracy and counterfeiting money.
>They... lower taxes and increase/maintain government spending. Which you can't do at the same time as each other without either borrowing or creating money, and government borrowing money increases interest rates, hence the printing.
Sure, but that hardly helps. The main tool for easing recessions is decreasing the federal funds rate aka "interest rates." You lose!
>Then just claim copying is stealing directly so people can better understand why you're wrong. The analogy is unnecessary and it doesn't even hold in that context.
Ha! The analogy is there to HELP YOU understand why I'm right and why you're wrong about me being wrong. It holds in context of supply and demand. The law of supply and demand applies to all products from software to food to paper money.
>If you use forged currency to "buy" a loaf of bread, the store is out one loaf of bread. If you copy some information the store's balance sheet is unchanged. The two are not equivalent and trying to ignore the difference is exactly what leads to the crazy conclusions the law makes about the calculation of damages for copyright infringement.
What if I make a billion copies of music and sell it for cash? Then I use the cash to buy a loaf of bread from the store? Would the store be out one loaf of bread? Did the balance sheet change? I didn't do any work to earn that loaf of bread, so who got shafted in this transaction? the software vendor or the bread maker or someone else? Philosophical question.
>It is merely saying that the damages are not equal to the retail price of the copy
So? I never said anything about this topic. It's still theft regardless if the value of the theft is equivalent to the retail price.
> If executed successfully QE will come with an inflationary cost that affects anyone who owns money in the united states.
Macroeconomic policy is chaos theory. You can make up all these models that say it's going to cause inflation, and then people use the extra money to pay down debts which cancels the inflation (because debt creates money and paying debt destroys money). If they then use some of the money they would otherwise have paid in interest on the debt to pay down even more principal then you've printed money and caused deflation. Butterfly = hurricane.
> I don't see the analogy between QE and piracy because no such analogy exists, you don't jump start a business by pirating it's software, never seen it happen.
You've never seen Adobe or Microsoft? Students pirate the software and then businesses have to buy it because it's what the graduates know how to use. Network effects. Mindshare. Economies of scale. Developers developers developers. Support contracts. The first hit is free.
And that's not even counting the economy as a whole. It's pretty obvious how giving someone an expensive piece of software when they couldn't otherwise afford it will benefit them. And if they genuinely can't afford it then it isn't a lost sale. So if the net consequence is positive to the pirate and neutral to the vendor then, regardless of the ethical implications, the net economic effect is positive.
> Sure, but that hardly helps. The main tool for easing recessions is decreasing the federal funds rate aka "interest rates." You lose!
I see what you're misunderstanding. Lowering interest rates is the same thing as printing money. In order to cause interest rates to go down, The Fed has to put money into the economy. QE is what they call it when the federal funds rate is effectively zero but they still want to add more money to the economy, so they have to pour it in from a different spigot. It's fundamentally the same thing as lowering interest rates, people just notice it more because they don't do it as often.
> Ha! The analogy is there to HELP YOU understand why I'm right and why you're wrong about me being wrong. It holds in context of supply and demand. The law of supply and demand applies to all products from software to food to paper money.
The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate.
But the real reason the analogy fails is that counterfeiting currency creates no value, so when you exchange counterfeit currency for something of value, the thing you take away from the seller has value and the thing you give does not. It has cost society something to give you that thing. The thing you're "stealing" when you counterfeit currency isn't the money, it's what the money buys. (This is perhaps easier to understand when you forge a gift certificate rather than currency.)
But when you make a copy of information, "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." You aren't taking anything away from society, you're only gaining something for yourself.
It's the difference between stealing a loaf of bread and causing the baker to lose a potential sale because you bake your own bread using his recipe.
> What if I make a billion copies of music and sell it for cash? Then I use the cash to buy a loaf of bread from the store? Would the store be out one loaf of bread? Did the balance sheet change? I didn't do any work to earn that loaf of bread, so who got shafted in this transaction? the software vendor or the bread maker or someone else? Philosophical question.
The whole deal with the baker is clearly irrelevant in that case because that transaction is real currency for real goods. The people most clearly being shafted are the customers because they're paying money for pirated goods (which they presumably think are legitimate). And t...
>Macroeconomic policy is chaos theory. You can make up all these models that say it's going to cause inflation, and then people use the extra money to pay down debts which cancels the inflation (because debt creates money and paying debt destroys money). If they then use some of the money they would otherwise have paid in interest on the debt to pay down even more principal then you've printed money and caused deflation. Butterfly = hurricane.
Come on, every human observation of reality is a macro observation of billions of atoms interacting with each other. We don't need to dive into chaos theory to observe that there are singular macro results arising from the chaotic effects of zillions of atoms interacting with one another. We build planes and cars out of the macro phenomena of billions of atoms. Economically speaking, Macro effects are evident for this: When you print money you inflate the economy, it's a pretty fundamental concept.
>You've never seen Adobe or Microsoft? Students pirate the software and then businesses have to buy it because it's what the graduates know how to use. Network effects. Mindshare. Economies of scale. Developers developers developers. Support contracts. The first hit is free.
That's called free trials in which the product is rendered useless once the trial period is up. It's taken back so the supply was only increased temporarily. It's more like a loan then QE.
>I see what you're misunderstanding. Lowering interest rates is the same thing as printing money. In order to cause interest rates to go down, The Fed has to put money into the economy. QE is what they call it when the federal funds rate is effectively zero but they still want to add more money to the economy, so they have to pour it in from a different spigot. It's fundamentally the same thing as lowering interest rates, people just notice it more because they don't do it as often.
You're the one misunderstanding. Dude printing money is different from loaning money. QE is rare because printing money is bad. Lowering interest rates is the primary method for jump starting the economy when there is a recession anyone who knows what they're talking about knows this. This is off topic anyway, but it's evident to me that you lack certain knowledge about the banking system.
>The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate.
You're digressing off topic. Either way this statement makes no sense. Monopolies control price because they control supply. The law of supply and demand is NEVER broken. What does the Fed have to do with this? Nothing.
>The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate.
But the real reason the analogy fails is that counterfeiting currency creates no value, so when you exchange counterfeit currency for something of value, the thing you take away from the seller has value and the thing you give does not. It has cost society something to give you that thing. The thing you're "stealing" when you counterfeit currency isn't the money, it's what the money buys. (This is perhaps easier to understand when you forge a gift certificate rather than currency.)
But when you make a copy of information, "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." You aren't taking anything away from society, you're only gaining something for yourself.
It's the difference between stealing a loaf of bread and causing the baker to lose a potential sale because you bake your own bread using his recipe.
Cash is a medium for bartering. It's an intermediary instrument. Selling a banana for $1 then using that $1 to buy an apple is roughly the same trading that banana for an apple. The same concept applies to copying information and counterfeiting money. If I copy a music track then sell i...
If someone that creates a digital good and requires payment for each copy, but people believe they don't have the right to create such a restriction, can't the GPL be ignored on exact same grounds (I should not be restricted or burdened by the GPL's restrictions or requirements)?
If you respect copyright as it currently exists then you are required to follow the GPL for such licensed projects. If you don't then you don't. What's your point? Pirates come in many forms?
I for one would gladly give up the GPL's copyleft principles if we also got rid of copyright.
Yes, currently copyright protects the GPL's requirements. And it protects a digital creators goods. But I find many (not necessarily you) in the tech industry want it both ways: copyright to enforce the GPL but break copyright so they can legally have their mp3s, movies, etc.
There is no more contradiction than those who do not believe in violence, but do accept it if its done in order to protect oneself or someone innocent. Anti-violence is not anti-police or anti-government, who uses force/threats to collect taxes and keep the peace.
Copyright law is the application of government violence to apply the will of the author to those who wish to copy, modify or use a copyrighted work. I personally do not like when people use government violence as their business model, through I do not mind if its used to police a agreement to non-violence.
"Copyright law is the application of government violence to apply the will of the author to those who wish to copy, modify or use a (GPL'd work without releasing their soure code)"
There is no difference for the person who is getting shot if its done by a criminal or a police officer. There is however a major difference for a community.
> Copyright law is the application of government violence to apply the will of the author to those who wish to copy, modify or use a copyrighted work.
No more than all property rights laws are the application of government violence to apply the will of the person in whom the law vests rights against others.
Speaking as a (very small) software vendor, the problem I have with the mindset of "every copy has no value" is that it isn't grounded in reality. If the recipient of the copy went out of their way to obtain the copy, and is using/enjoying the benefits of it on even a limited basis, then they are effectively stealing the up-front investment of the producer.
A good thought exercise is this: would it be equally valid to say that a producer has no claim against someone making thousands of copies of a digital good and selling them for $1 a piece ? If the answer is no, then what makes the fact that they are giving away the copies any different ? In both instances, the producer has had their right to determine the terms of the sale arbitrarily removed without their consent.
In no other areas of our economies do we allow such nonsense to go on. You can't walk into a retail store, fill your cart with items, and then dictate to the cashier that you'll be paying 10 cents on the dollar for the items and walk out of the store. If you don't agree with the terms of the sale, then you find another producer that has more favorable terms or you go without. If you want/need the product that bad, then you'll agree to the terms of the sale. It's that simple.
Edit: and yes, I understand that the linked article was about the cost attributed to such copies. It is correct to posit that not all copies equal valid lost sales. The problem with this type of argument is that it is often put forward by those that also promote the idea that sharing of copyrighted digital goods is a consumer's right because such goods are "information", and not a tangible good. It's a ridiculous stance to take because it completely hand-waves away the actual time and money that went into producing the "information".
Absolutely. Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor. If I don't have to give up any of my time/labor in the deal, then of course I won't mentally assign any value to the good. It's a hell of a feedback loop: obtain something for free, use/copy it freely, and then preach to anyone that will listen about how it has no value, even though lots of people apparently have a significant desire to possess it.
"Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor."
No it's not. If anything, that is a ridiculous opinion. It has no basis is society, law or discourse. There's little relation between labor and copyright. A more apt analogy is something like land rights. But that is still not talking about the real issue. Chefs puts significant amount of labor into their creations, they are not covered by copyright.
Yes, and chefs are compensated for their time/labor. You can't just walk into a restaurant, eat a meal, and take off without paying what the owner of the restaurant has determined is the price of the food you just consumed. How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale ? There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work.
Chefs are compensated for their time (unless maybe you're the head chef), but they are also not compensated for their intellectual property, which is the point. Maybe a better example is copying a dress (if you imagine outsourced manufacturing).
"How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale?"
There are plenty of creative people who sell their time, just like chefs. Of course plenty of companies today don't even sell software, but essentially services.
"There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work"
Yes, but this is to some extent a different issue than copyright itself. I'm not even arguing for the removal of copyright (I'm personally for stronger authors rights with drastic reduction in terms), just that copyright is mainly rights to artistic, rather than utilitarian or scientific, things i.e. doesn't have a whole lot to do with labor.
This should be even more apparent today with cloud distribution, where software can't be resold.
Yes, but chefs have absolute control over the ingredients in any "special recipes" and can restrict access in ways that those that produce works like literature and software cannot. Unlike digital goods, the resultant dishes cannot be copied indefinitely at zero cost.
I also do not really care for the super-long copyright terms, and my posts here should not be confused as a defense of the likes of Disney, etc. Most software is obsolete within a year. The unauthorized copying of newly-released software is my primary issue, having been directly affected by it for so long.
> I mean it literally shows how copying something makes it worthless.
How's that? If the same copies were legally bought they would have had value, but now that they are illegally created they are worthless? Is it the law that gives them value, instead of something intrinsic? Is value the same thing as cost?
It's an intrinsic property. There's a academic field called economics which describes this property. The property is famously known as the law of supply and demand. If you take a product and increase the demand the price goes up. If you increase the supply the price goes down. If you make a billion copies of the product the price would go down to near zero.
How can it be intrinsic if it's determined by external factors like supply and demand? And if value is determined by cost, how come people still want it when it's free?
>How can it be intrinsic if it's determined by external factors like supply and demand?
Well it depends on how you interpret the word intrinsic. You were inquiring about how written law could influence value, I was responding by saying value isn't determined by some made up law written by humans, it's determined by laws intrinsic to economics: The law of supply and demand.
>And if value is determined by cost,
When did I say value is determined by cost? Cost is only an indirect contributor. Value itself is determined by supply and demand.
>how come people still want it when it's free?
If something is free, it doesn't change how much people want the product. Value does not influence Demand. It is the otherway around: Supply and demand influence value. Thus whether I charge a billion dollars or zero dollars for the oxygen you breath, you'll still want it as much as you did before regardless of the value.
> Supply and demand influence value. Thus whether I charge a billion dollars or zero dollars for the oxygen you breath, you'll still want it as much as you did before regardless of the value.
The demand for air is much, much smaller than the supply, so by your logic it should have very little value. Yet it has a huge value and no cost. Now you see why I'm saying that market forces influence only the cost and not the value?
Air has very little value due to excessive supply. If I charged you 50 dollars for a bottle of air would you buy it? No you wouldn't.
What if I restricted the supply of air by choking you? Give me $100 dollars and I'll let you breath for ten seconds. Suddenly 10 seconds of air is worth more than $50 dollars.
You demand air to survive but how much you pay for air (aka the value of air) depends on me controlling the supply.
But the art project has made a billion copies and yet the market price remains what it was before it started and people are still paying nonzero sums for copies ... ?
And the file is worth significantly less because of said distribution. Copyright law and the general inaccessibility to these networks is what contributes to limited supply. To a person who is not afraid of the law, is morally ambiguous, and has the technical ability to access said networks, the file is worthless.
You must be new to reality and the concept of using your brain for intelligent analysis rather then assuming the person you're talking to is a total idiot.
Here's a foreign concept for you: People can download, read/listen/watch things that are worthless.
For example, the air you breath. How much would you pay for it? Nothing. Therefore the air you breath is worthless. Get it? How much you want or need something is different from how much something is worth. You need air for survival more than you need clothes but because the supply of clothes is more limited than air, clothes is worth more than air. It's easy to determine the value of air relative to clothes. If I charge you a dime for the air you breath, I'm ripping you off, if I charge you a dime for a tuxedo, you're ripping me off. Therefore clothes is worth more than air even though people breathe air everyday and need it to survive.
In conclusion: To determine how much something is worth you just need to look at how much people are willing to pay for it, not how much they use it. It's the law of Supply and demand.
>I think I found your problem: you're not familiar enough with the English language.
That's a highly offensive insult. But I'll take your bait.
Lets talk about the english language and how it's used in conjunction with the word value when discussing certain topics. When we talk about marketing we use the MARKETING DEFINITION of value. When we talk about economics we use the ECONOMIC DEFINITION of value. The definition of a word changes depending on the context. These are typical language concepts that exist both in the English language and other languages as well.
Since we are talking about the law of supply and demand I would venture a guess that we're talking about economics rather than marketing. Thus by context and by common sense we are using the ECONOMIC DEFINITION of value. See the ECONOMIC DEFINITION of value below:
It makes no sense to talk about the economic value of goods that are not on sale, like the air you breathe. You remember, the item you claimed it's worthless?
Anything can be made for sale if there is enough demand and a limited supply. The law of supply and demand applies to everything regardless of whether or not it is for sale.
If an item is not for sale it usually means there is either no supply, an unlimited supply, or no demand. See what happens when the supply of clean air is limited below:
>You remember, the item you claimed it's worthless?
I do. What of it? There are people in this world who will pay nothing for that item because it is freely downloadable through piracy. To them, the item is worthless.
Dang, I apologize for making a personal attack. I was responding to personal attacks made by stefantalpalaru.
Two comments made by him I found insulting and provoking:
>You must be new to the internet.
and
>I think I found your problem: you're not familiar enough with the English language.
Although these personal attacks on me are no excuse for me to return these personal attacks, I feel that stefantalpalaru needs to be warned against such negative comments as well. Just warning me feels unfair and unjust and I would appreciate it if you reprimanded or warned people in a way that would make the situation fair and just. It doesn't feel good at all when the provocateur didn't even get a warning.
You're right, those comments also broke the HN guidelines. I would have chided them too if I had seen them, but it's impossible for us to see everything on HN. Fortunately, users have since flagged them.
We all need to work on remaining civil even when provoked, though.
The "nonsense" I was referring to was the inability to dictate the terms of the sale. If a chef takes 2 months to develop a special dish for a very wealthy customer, you can be pretty sure that the price is going to be very high, and only the person paying the price will be enjoying the dish. Likewise, if the chef spends the same amount of time developing a special dish for general consumption, you can also be pretty sure that he/she plans on recouping those costs by distributing them across many customers' meals, the price of which is determined by the chef based upon how much the original cost was, and how fast he/she wishes to recoup the costs.
A fashion designer can't design a collection and enjoy exclusivity. A couple of months (if not weeks) later the fast-fashion store are going to have copies. They can't dictate the terms of a sale anymore than a musician that gets copied can.
So the fashion industry have worked out their own added value in forms of heritage, luxury and exclusivity. Just like people who sell open source add value with trust, support and consulting. And people who sell games add value with multiplayer, statistics and achievements.
Less copyright means more labor not less. More performances, more innovation, more consulting. If that's a good thing and when it's not is of course a discussion in itself.
> If you want/need the product that bad, then you'll agree to the terms of the sale. It's that simple.
Let me rephrase that: you get access only to the culture you can afford.
We don't care about the common good, we just care about getting rich. At some point we got the actor with a monopoly on violence to guarantee our artificial control over copy rights and now it's our God given right to impose it.
We're talking about a lot more than just MP3s here, so you're not doing yourself any favors by restricting the argument to just popular culture. Copyright covers any type of creative work, and is going to become more and more important as the world switches from work that is primarily dominated by physical labor to one where one's creative work is how they are compensated. Software developers can't keep popping out new versions of software every week, and authors can't write an entire book each week, so there is an economic requirement that they be able to amortize the costs of their labor. The only way to do that is to allow the developer to dictate the terms of the sale and artificially restrict access to only those that agree to the terms. Perhaps Kickstarter or others will change this and we won't need copyright anymore, but right now it doesn't just protect the rights of large distributors, but also the rights of millions of independent creators that rely on such laws to ensure that they are compensated for their work, and to prevent bigger, more established players, from stealing their work.
> artificially restrict access to only those that agree to the terms
But that's not possible. Technical locks can be overridden rather easily. The reality is that selling digital copies of anything is not a solid business model and it can only be kept in place by bullies with a monopoly on violence.
I would just like to bring up the fact that the accounts TimJYoung and crimsonalucard were both created 1891 days ago and are both intently arguing in favor of copyright protections. I don't really have good arguments against them (although my gut feeling is to disagree), and I'm not really trying to make a point, just found it suspicious.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the answer is with copying. But I have a strong belief that everybody should be able to enjoy all information and media, whether or not they have a relatively limitless supply of cash to blow.
And I have a strong belief that creators should be compensated for their hard work. Tell you what: let's compromise. Creators get a right, let's call it "copyright" or something, whereby for a limited amount of time they get to control how to distribute their work. In order to maximize profits they will rationally not charge too much. After enough time has passed, this right expires and their work goes into the public domain. Sounds good?
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What if another copy was listened to by one certain individual a thousand times? Surely the "value" is not the same for both copies.
It's my understanding that a per-use presumptive value is how performance rights for copyrighted songs are handled. If your band plays "Freebird" in a public venue that does not have a performance license, the liability is a certain fixed amount regardless of the size of the audience, or how much beer got sold as a result of your performance.
We wouldn't be here today if we couldn't.
It's about the latter, that the artists didn't "allow to copy". Guess what? They can't stop people from copying digital material, ever, regardless of how much moralizing the industry backers do. This is happening/has happened, so they need to get on board.
I agree with this, but it does not change the fact that 'everybody' is committing a crime and harming the artist.
What is or isn't a crime evolves with society.
>harming the artist
No, harming a specific type of artist who insists on maintaining a 30, 40, 50 year old business model.
The biggest stars on the planet have their music on YouTube for free, and I'm sure their music is downloaded proportionately more as well. I'm talking about the Adeles, the Taylor Swifts, the Justin Biebers, the Drakes, the Wiz Khalifas. They are hardly harmed. They've "grown up" in the digital world, and have built their careers around it.
And it isn't the "middle class" being harmed, either. I can have an album up on iTunes, or any other number of platforms, by tomorrow. At what point in history have independent artists have access to that sort of global reach and distribution? This is a great time to be a musician.
1) YouTube videos from major distributors are monetized (Vevo), and user-contributed versions are often taken down. So, they are still making money while also promoting the artist and maintaining control over the product.
2) Songs on iTunes cost ~$1, they aren't free.
There are other platforms. The point is distribution is cheap and simple.
(I'm thinking of the recent article https://torrentfreak.com/when-authors-demand-payment-for-eve..., which doesn't consider the obvious point that authors make it a condition of sale to not copy it. Almost every direct editorial I've seen from them has similar gaping flaws. This one, for example, completely misses the problem with copies, which is distribution to people who haven't paid.)
And the article clearly supports the message, it's not objectively reporting the news.
That is, the copyright industry comes up with numbers about how badly file sharing hurts their numbers by counting one download, that is, one copy, as a lost sale. They've extended that analogy, in fact, to try and prevent people from ripping their own music, DVDs, etc (it's still technically illegal to copy your own DVD to your hard drive, for your own viewing).
This is an art piece to show how nonsensical that argument is, that a copy does not equate to a lost sale.
>They've extended that analogy, in fact, to try and prevent people from ripping their own music, DVDs, etc
They want to prevent people from being able to upload pirated DVDs. They couldn't care less whether you rip them for yourselves, afaik, but they want to ban the tools to do so because they're also used by pirates.
If I'm wrong, do you have an example of when they tried to stop self-copying for its own sake?
You seem to be saying such laws and lobbying is only there to prevent people from being able to upload pirated DVDs, but the obvious problem there is such actions -are already illegal-. Their incentive may be to prevent piracy, but their actions are very clearly to prevent -anyone- from ripping their legally purchased media. They will not -prosecute- an individual who never uploaded something, no, but they have -no- problem with making it illegal and going after anyone who would produce the tools to allow it to happen.
Their actions, and the rationales they use to justify it, are the problem, not their incentives. I am in complete -agreement- with their incentives; file sharing is certainly a threat to their business model, and they either need to change business model or try and stamp it out. But in trying to stamp it out they are effectively also trying to stamp out things that I should be able to do (and legally may be both allowed to do, and not allowed to do; I'm legally allowed to rip my content, but not legally allowed to circumvent DRM to do it).
But we're digressing. My point was, and still is, simply that there is no analogy being made by the article, nor Sunde; the analogy (or whatever you want to call it; it's just semantics) is being made by the copyright industry.
Agreed, in mocking it they're straining it a bit, but the point is that they're mocking a terrible argument that the copyright industry has made to make their case in both courts of law and courts of public opinion. Same as the "You Wouldn't Download A Car!" meme was made to mock their "You Wouldn't Steal A Car!" ad campaign.
The only point I'd make is that the copyright industry hasn't claimed "every copy is a lost sale", they've claimed that some copies are lost sales. Often, the question is whether the "main purpose" of a technology is for illegal purposes, and if the answer was yes, it wouldn't be allowed, even if there were legitimate uses.
Regardless, "the analogy breaks down here, therefore the analogy isn't valid anywhere" is not a valid argument. To the extent the parody is doing that, it's wrong.
That is, when the copyright industry says "sharing these files is hurting us, we must make it illegal to make copies" (because that is what they lobby for, anti-DRM circumvention and the like), showing that making copies -is not what hurts your business model- is a worthwhile goal, in both courts of law and courts of public opinion.
The initial analogy is not a valid argument; taking it to the breaking point and by doing so showing that the analogy is too simplistic to be accurate, is a valid response.
The avenue you should be pursuing is getting the LoC to allow DVD ripping as a DMCA exemption. I don't even think the movie industry would oppose.
Personally, I think there are better ways than this. For example, he would build these products and give them away. Oh wait ... that's work.
People are already doing that: https://creativecommons.org/music-communities
Instead of sites that distribute torrent files, we'll have sites that distribute blueprints on how to build a printer that can print out perfect copies of dollar bills. Totally not illegal!
Of course, in the same way that owning a music track makes me more likely to go out and buy said music track, owning a copied dollar bill makes me more likely to go out and actually work to earn a real dollar bill. So in a sense, the same way copying music helps the music industry, copying dollars helps the economy!
The logic makes perfect sense!
http://gizmodo.com/5995301/how-much-money-is-there-on-earth
Altering it, however would.
The united states government needs to get with the times. Digital distribution is the wave of the future. Why should the united states be the sole entity allowed to print dollar bills? If people from other countries need US dollar bills then, they should have the right to print out dollar bills.
There's a new thing emerging on the piracy scene called a superdollar. See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar. North Korea is, apparently, on the tip of the spear for this new technology; bravely paving the way of a glorious future! The US needs stop using old archaic ways of distributing money and get with the program! If the world was more like North Korea, the world would be a better place.
Usually anyone can copy currency as long as you clearly indicate that it is a copy.
"The united states government needs to get with the times. Digital distribution is the wave of the future. Why should the united states be the sole entity allowed to print dollar bills?"
Not a unreasonable question if you equate "print dollar bills" with issuing currency, which is what they actually do.
"If the world was more like North Korea, the world would be a better place"
Is it really that much fun to make these sarcastic ignorant comparisons rather than discuss the real issues and maybe learn something?
Would a copy of a dollar still be a copy if it was clearly marked indicating it was a copy? Strange loop!
When you increase demand you increase the value of a product, when you increase supply you decrease the value of a product. Basic economics. Let's take this concept and apply it to money. If you print money you increase the money supply. When you increase the money supply you decrease the value of money.
Thus the action of counterfeiting is actually theft. By printing money you lower the value of other peoples' money and thus you are stealing value from other people. That's why counterfeiting is bad. Written laws on forgery and fraud don't cause this phenomenon they are a consequence of it.
The same academic principle works for piracy. Get it? You copy a product you devalue the product by increasing supply. These are principles of Basic economics and Intrinsic law that permeates the fabric of reality. In essence: When you pirate a product you are stealing it, there is no way around it.
Why is it not ok to pirate money but it's totally ok to pirate music? I'll tell you why. The issue touches the roots of humanity's morally ambiguous nature: When you pirate money, you harm everyone who owns money and face the ire of the entire population.
When you pirate music you harm only the creator of the music and you probably got a lot of friends who do the same thing. Significantly easier to do from an ethical standpoint. But how do you face yourself? What does a typical weak, cowardly human tell himself when he commits a crime? A typical human will create an overly-complicated and sophisticated logical delusion in order to justify the action to himself. Stupid logic like "downloading an mp3 makes me more likely to buy the track" are typical examples. In fact, you can likely witness a version of this overly-complicated logic in your response to this post.
Is that enough discourse for you? Yours is the lazy rebuttable without foundation in reality.
"You copy a product you devalue the product by increasing supply"
A digital product already has infinite supply. The question isn't if copying affects supply, but if it affects demand. If someone copy something they would never have bought the economic damage to the author is theoretically zero. Copyright doesn't even deal with "increasing supply" as a intrinsic thing. If you spend year creating recipes for a restaurant that become successful and someone opens a restaurant next door serving the same things (and thereby increasing supply) the original restaurant has little to no copyright claim. The same is true in other fields. Even universal human rights doesn't deal with intellectual property in this way. There's simply little basis for this view.
"When you pirate music you harm only the creator of the music"
That you "only harm the creator" is objectively false, since even if you prescribe to great harm being done by piracy it's not only the creator, but the rightsholder that gets hurt.
"What does a typical weak, cowardly human tell himself when he commits a crime?"
It's when you don't have good arguments nor is well read you have to resort to this type of name calling.
"Yours is the lazy rebuttable without foundation in reality"
My arguments are absolutely based in the current discourse.
You called me ignorant directly and you started it. "Ignorant" is a highly charged word that will ignite hostility. Do you start debates with that word in real life? Perhaps if you had experience with "copyright debate" you'd know that things won't end well when you start something with that word. Maybe you're just too ignorant to realize that. I never directly called you anything. Besides, there's a difference between fact-calling and name-calling in which case what I'm doing is more closer to the former.
>You clearly don't have much experience with debating copyright
I'm not talking about copyright. I started the topic and that topic dictates the terms of this debate. The topic was a sarcastic example about piracy and theft in terms of supply, demand and value. It was not at all about copyright law. When you talk about human law you deal with controversial topics like whether a pattern of sound needs to be copyrighted or whether a recipe needs to be copyrighted. I'm not dealing with any of those ambiguities. I am dealing with what happens in economics when you pirate something. What happens when you pirate money and what happens when you pirate software. I am not talking about written law.
>My arguments are absolutely based in the current discourse.
Possibly based on discourse but not based on reality and therefore off topic.
>If someone copy something they would never have bought the economic damage to the author is theoretically zero.
What dream world do you live in where you think this is all that happens with piracy? Many people also copy things that they would have bought in the first place.
>A digital product already has infinite supply.
And as such, the product is usually worthless unless distribution/supply is artificially restricted (Netflix, DRM, etc.)
> Copyright doesn't even deal with "increasing supply" as a intrinsic thing.
Who cares? Increasing supply is a part of reality, and that is what I'm talking about.
>If you spend year creating recipes for a restaurant that become successful and someone opens a restaurant next door serving the same things (and thereby increasing supply) the original restaurant has little to no copyright claim
Why are their secret recipes? Why do people hide these things? Because restricting supply increases VALUE. Copyright law is an issue that is separate from this phenomenon.
I didn't call you ignorant, so much as your argument that involved currency and north korea. But I realize it's a fine line and should have used a different word. Not that you are taking the high road here either.
"The topic was a sarcastic example about piracy and theft in terms of supply, demand and value. It was not at all about copyright law."
How is piracy and "theft" not about copyright law? If you're not breaking copyright law it's not piracy.
"Possibly based on discourse but not based on reality and therefore off topic"
I obviously don't think so. My kind of arguments are the ones being discussed at conferences, in books, documentaries and papers.
"What dream world do you live in where you think this is all that happens with piracy? Many people also copy things that they would have bought in the first place."
There's a reason I used the word "theoretically". Still a 14 year old is seldom going to buy a $4000 program and companies sometimes recognizes these scenarios. Microsoft did in China for instance.
"Who cares? Increasing supply is a part of reality, and that is what I'm talking about."
I don't see how increasing supply in general is relevant. If I seed some flowers I'm increasing the supply of flowers, but few people would see that as a negative thing. If there were no copyright, like in (to some extent) fashion or cooking, copying would be part of reality and there would be little point to compare it to copying currency.
You punch someone in the face you think there's going to be any high road? Guess what, you start shit, people react, you make enemies.
>How is piracy and "theft" not about copyright law? If you're not breaking copyright law it's not piracy.
It's because humans are born with the ability to moralize and differentiate from right and wrong without the need for written law. Everybody knows what theft is without referencing copyright law. What I am talking about in my argument is how the theft of value occurs according to the intrinsic law of supply and demand; and the theft of value is morally wrong according to common sense, no need to refer to copyright law.
Let's put it this way... If you rip off someone's secret recipe copyright law may say that you're not wrong, but your conscious will tell you that you're an ass.
>I obviously don't think so. My kind of arguments are the ones being discussed at conferences, in books, documentaries and papers.
Good for you, but guess what, those things discussed in conferences? If it's about copyright law, it's off topic.
>There's a reason I used the word "theoretically". Still a 14 year old is seldom going to buy a $4000 program and companies sometimes recognizes these scenarios. Microsoft did in China for instance.
Theories are used to speculate about the unknown or things not directly observed. When evidence and common sense flies in the face of theory, the theory becomes shit and a new theory is needed. Why even present a flawed theory? Either way it doesn't even matter if a 14 y/o pirates a $4000 program he would never buy, the problem is when someone pirates something they would otherwise buy which I assure you happens a lot.
>I don't see how increasing supply in general is relevant. If I seed some flowers I'm increasing the supply of flowers, but few people would see that as a negative thing. If there were no copyright, like in (to some extent) fashion or cooking, copying would be part of reality and there would be little point to compare it to copying currency.
You can't form a business around products with unlimited supply because those products are worthless. Cooking and fashion are supply limited products. Companies use brand names, trade secrecy and manufacturing techniques that require enormous capital to protect and restrict supply. Physical limits like finite materials time, and effort also serve to restrict supply. Such is the nature of physical products, and it is because of this limit in supply that a business can be formed around it. If there was a physical product with virtually unlimited supply it would be fundamentally impossible to form a business around it.
Is there a physical product in this world that has almost unlimited supply? Yes. Air. How many business are formed around selling air? Almost none. Although, I know of one such business in canada that sells bottled clean air to people living in polluted cities in china. The only reason why this business can exist is because china has a "restricted" supply of clean air.
Information unlike physical products is not supply limited. We can copy information at a drop of a dime. Without laws, DRM or artificial supply restrictions programmed into the product itself; music, software and movies would be as worthless as the air you breath. And I said before you can't form a business around something with unlimited supply.
Since you are now essentially making threats I can no longer in good faith continue this discussion.
If you believe I made a threat, quote me on it. I clearly did no such thing.
We don't need all the baggage of monetary policy here. Let's get to the heart of what you're after: How about copying a gift certificate?
The only point you're making is that it's possible for a forged copy to be the instrument of a fraud. When you redeem the forged gift certificate you're effectively stealing inventory from the store.
So you're really just making the spurious claim that copying is stealing, using a detour through currency forgery to disguise the nature of your claim.
> So in a sense, the same way copying music helps the music industry, copying dollars helps the economy!
Do you understand why the government prints money during a recession?
Yes I do! Do you? The term is called quantitative easing and it is a mechanism of last resort! Amazing! And totally irrelevant to the debate! Speaking of irrelevancy, do you know what the government usually does during a recession before they resort to actually printing money? If you do you win!
>So you're really just making the spurious claim that copying is stealing, using a detour through currency forgery to disguise the nature of your claim.
No I'm not! No disguises. I am illustrating an isomorphism. Copying is stealing and the concept is EXACTLY the same as printing money.
So you understand how quantitative easing stimulates the economy but you don't see the analogy to creating more copies of information goods?
> Speaking of irrelevancy, do you know what the government usually does during a recession before they resort to actually printing money? If you do you win!
They... lower taxes and increase/maintain government spending. Which you can't do at the same time as each other without either borrowing or creating money, and government borrowing money increases interest rates, hence the printing.
> No I'm not! No disguises. I am illustrating an isomorphism. Copying is stealing and the concept is EXACTLY the same as printing money.
Then just claim copying is stealing directly so people can better understand why you're wrong. The analogy is unnecessary and it doesn't even hold in that context.
If you use forged currency to "buy" a loaf of bread, the store is out one loaf of bread. If you copy some information the store's balance sheet is unchanged. The two are not equivalent and trying to ignore the difference is exactly what leads to the crazy conclusions the law makes about the calculation of damages for copyright infringement.
Notice that this is not saying that copyright infringement causes no damages. It is merely saying that the damages are not equal to the cost of the product, unlike the situation of an actual theft.
I'm not sure you would even like a direct analogy to theft. A store buys a loaf of bread for $1 and aims to sells it for $1.50 (or whatever). If you steal it, the loss they take on their books is their cost, not the retail price. Calculating damages that way wouldn't be very favorable to copyright holders.
Quantitative easing is a very dangerous last resort action and it's done in a very controlled way. It is also RARELY executed because printing money is really bad. Look up runaway inflation in argentina for more information.
If executed successfully QE will come with an inflationary cost that affects anyone who owns money in the united states.
I don't see the analogy between QE and piracy because no such analogy exists, you don't jump start a business by pirating it's software, never seen it happen. Although, I do see the analogy between piracy and counterfeiting money.
>They... lower taxes and increase/maintain government spending. Which you can't do at the same time as each other without either borrowing or creating money, and government borrowing money increases interest rates, hence the printing.
Sure, but that hardly helps. The main tool for easing recessions is decreasing the federal funds rate aka "interest rates." You lose!
>Then just claim copying is stealing directly so people can better understand why you're wrong. The analogy is unnecessary and it doesn't even hold in that context.
Ha! The analogy is there to HELP YOU understand why I'm right and why you're wrong about me being wrong. It holds in context of supply and demand. The law of supply and demand applies to all products from software to food to paper money.
>If you use forged currency to "buy" a loaf of bread, the store is out one loaf of bread. If you copy some information the store's balance sheet is unchanged. The two are not equivalent and trying to ignore the difference is exactly what leads to the crazy conclusions the law makes about the calculation of damages for copyright infringement.
What if I make a billion copies of music and sell it for cash? Then I use the cash to buy a loaf of bread from the store? Would the store be out one loaf of bread? Did the balance sheet change? I didn't do any work to earn that loaf of bread, so who got shafted in this transaction? the software vendor or the bread maker or someone else? Philosophical question.
>It is merely saying that the damages are not equal to the retail price of the copy
So? I never said anything about this topic. It's still theft regardless if the value of the theft is equivalent to the retail price.
Macroeconomic policy is chaos theory. You can make up all these models that say it's going to cause inflation, and then people use the extra money to pay down debts which cancels the inflation (because debt creates money and paying debt destroys money). If they then use some of the money they would otherwise have paid in interest on the debt to pay down even more principal then you've printed money and caused deflation. Butterfly = hurricane.
> I don't see the analogy between QE and piracy because no such analogy exists, you don't jump start a business by pirating it's software, never seen it happen.
You've never seen Adobe or Microsoft? Students pirate the software and then businesses have to buy it because it's what the graduates know how to use. Network effects. Mindshare. Economies of scale. Developers developers developers. Support contracts. The first hit is free.
And that's not even counting the economy as a whole. It's pretty obvious how giving someone an expensive piece of software when they couldn't otherwise afford it will benefit them. And if they genuinely can't afford it then it isn't a lost sale. So if the net consequence is positive to the pirate and neutral to the vendor then, regardless of the ethical implications, the net economic effect is positive.
> Sure, but that hardly helps. The main tool for easing recessions is decreasing the federal funds rate aka "interest rates." You lose!
I see what you're misunderstanding. Lowering interest rates is the same thing as printing money. In order to cause interest rates to go down, The Fed has to put money into the economy. QE is what they call it when the federal funds rate is effectively zero but they still want to add more money to the economy, so they have to pour it in from a different spigot. It's fundamentally the same thing as lowering interest rates, people just notice it more because they don't do it as often.
> Ha! The analogy is there to HELP YOU understand why I'm right and why you're wrong about me being wrong. It holds in context of supply and demand. The law of supply and demand applies to all products from software to food to paper money.
The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate.
But the real reason the analogy fails is that counterfeiting currency creates no value, so when you exchange counterfeit currency for something of value, the thing you take away from the seller has value and the thing you give does not. It has cost society something to give you that thing. The thing you're "stealing" when you counterfeit currency isn't the money, it's what the money buys. (This is perhaps easier to understand when you forge a gift certificate rather than currency.)
But when you make a copy of information, "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." You aren't taking anything away from society, you're only gaining something for yourself.
It's the difference between stealing a loaf of bread and causing the baker to lose a potential sale because you bake your own bread using his recipe.
> What if I make a billion copies of music and sell it for cash? Then I use the cash to buy a loaf of bread from the store? Would the store be out one loaf of bread? Did the balance sheet change? I didn't do any work to earn that loaf of bread, so who got shafted in this transaction? the software vendor or the bread maker or someone else? Philosophical question.
The whole deal with the baker is clearly irrelevant in that case because that transaction is real currency for real goods. The people most clearly being shafted are the customers because they're paying money for pirated goods (which they presumably think are legitimate). And t...
Come on, every human observation of reality is a macro observation of billions of atoms interacting with each other. We don't need to dive into chaos theory to observe that there are singular macro results arising from the chaotic effects of zillions of atoms interacting with one another. We build planes and cars out of the macro phenomena of billions of atoms. Economically speaking, Macro effects are evident for this: When you print money you inflate the economy, it's a pretty fundamental concept.
>You've never seen Adobe or Microsoft? Students pirate the software and then businesses have to buy it because it's what the graduates know how to use. Network effects. Mindshare. Economies of scale. Developers developers developers. Support contracts. The first hit is free.
That's called free trials in which the product is rendered useless once the trial period is up. It's taken back so the supply was only increased temporarily. It's more like a loan then QE.
>I see what you're misunderstanding. Lowering interest rates is the same thing as printing money. In order to cause interest rates to go down, The Fed has to put money into the economy. QE is what they call it when the federal funds rate is effectively zero but they still want to add more money to the economy, so they have to pour it in from a different spigot. It's fundamentally the same thing as lowering interest rates, people just notice it more because they don't do it as often.
You're the one misunderstanding. Dude printing money is different from loaning money. QE is rare because printing money is bad. Lowering interest rates is the primary method for jump starting the economy when there is a recession anyone who knows what they're talking about knows this. This is off topic anyway, but it's evident to me that you lack certain knowledge about the banking system.
>The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate.
You're digressing off topic. Either way this statement makes no sense. Monopolies control price because they control supply. The law of supply and demand is NEVER broken. What does the Fed have to do with this? Nothing.
>The law of supply and demand is broken in monopoly markets. The price is whatever the monopoly says it is. The Fed sets the interest rate. But the real reason the analogy fails is that counterfeiting currency creates no value, so when you exchange counterfeit currency for something of value, the thing you take away from the seller has value and the thing you give does not. It has cost society something to give you that thing. The thing you're "stealing" when you counterfeit currency isn't the money, it's what the money buys. (This is perhaps easier to understand when you forge a gift certificate rather than currency.) But when you make a copy of information, "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." You aren't taking anything away from society, you're only gaining something for yourself. It's the difference between stealing a loaf of bread and causing the baker to lose a potential sale because you bake your own bread using his recipe.
Cash is a medium for bartering. It's an intermediary instrument. Selling a banana for $1 then using that $1 to buy an apple is roughly the same trading that banana for an apple. The same concept applies to copying information and counterfeiting money. If I copy a music track then sell i...
Anti-copyright = anti-GPL
I for one would gladly give up the GPL's copyleft principles if we also got rid of copyright.
Copyright law is the application of government violence to apply the will of the author to those who wish to copy, modify or use a copyrighted work. I personally do not like when people use government violence as their business model, through I do not mind if its used to police a agreement to non-violence.
No difference.
No more than all property rights laws are the application of government violence to apply the will of the person in whom the law vests rights against others.
assuming a single purchase good, one person creating n copies once does not steal much value.
n persons creating one copy does steal much value.
A good thought exercise is this: would it be equally valid to say that a producer has no claim against someone making thousands of copies of a digital good and selling them for $1 a piece ? If the answer is no, then what makes the fact that they are giving away the copies any different ? In both instances, the producer has had their right to determine the terms of the sale arbitrarily removed without their consent.
In no other areas of our economies do we allow such nonsense to go on. You can't walk into a retail store, fill your cart with items, and then dictate to the cashier that you'll be paying 10 cents on the dollar for the items and walk out of the store. If you don't agree with the terms of the sale, then you find another producer that has more favorable terms or you go without. If you want/need the product that bad, then you'll agree to the terms of the sale. It's that simple.
Edit: and yes, I understand that the linked article was about the cost attributed to such copies. It is correct to posit that not all copies equal valid lost sales. The problem with this type of argument is that it is often put forward by those that also promote the idea that sharing of copyrighted digital goods is a consumer's right because such goods are "information", and not a tangible good. It's a ridiculous stance to take because it completely hand-waves away the actual time and money that went into producing the "information".
No it's not. If anything, that is a ridiculous opinion. It has no basis is society, law or discourse. There's little relation between labor and copyright. A more apt analogy is something like land rights. But that is still not talking about the real issue. Chefs puts significant amount of labor into their creations, they are not covered by copyright.
"How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale?"
There are plenty of creative people who sell their time, just like chefs. Of course plenty of companies today don't even sell software, but essentially services.
"There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work"
Yes, but this is to some extent a different issue than copyright itself. I'm not even arguing for the removal of copyright (I'm personally for stronger authors rights with drastic reduction in terms), just that copyright is mainly rights to artistic, rather than utilitarian or scientific, things i.e. doesn't have a whole lot to do with labor.
This should be even more apparent today with cloud distribution, where software can't be resold.
I also do not really care for the super-long copyright terms, and my posts here should not be confused as a defense of the likes of Disney, etc. Most software is obsolete within a year. The unauthorized copying of newly-released software is my primary issue, having been directly affected by it for so long.
How's that? If the same copies were legally bought they would have had value, but now that they are illegally created they are worthless? Is it the law that gives them value, instead of something intrinsic? Is value the same thing as cost?
Well it depends on how you interpret the word intrinsic. You were inquiring about how written law could influence value, I was responding by saying value isn't determined by some made up law written by humans, it's determined by laws intrinsic to economics: The law of supply and demand.
>And if value is determined by cost,
When did I say value is determined by cost? Cost is only an indirect contributor. Value itself is determined by supply and demand.
>how come people still want it when it's free?
If something is free, it doesn't change how much people want the product. Value does not influence Demand. It is the otherway around: Supply and demand influence value. Thus whether I charge a billion dollars or zero dollars for the oxygen you breath, you'll still want it as much as you did before regardless of the value.
The demand for air is much, much smaller than the supply, so by your logic it should have very little value. Yet it has a huge value and no cost. Now you see why I'm saying that market forces influence only the cost and not the value?
What if I restricted the supply of air by choking you? Give me $100 dollars and I'll let you breath for ten seconds. Suddenly 10 seconds of air is worth more than $50 dollars.
You demand air to survive but how much you pay for air (aka the value of air) depends on me controlling the supply.
The project wouldn't be an "art project" if the copies were actually distributed.
You must be new to the internet. Millions of people download and read/listen to/watch those files you deem worthless.
Here's a foreign concept for you: People can download, read/listen/watch things that are worthless.
For example, the air you breath. How much would you pay for it? Nothing. Therefore the air you breath is worthless. Get it? How much you want or need something is different from how much something is worth. You need air for survival more than you need clothes but because the supply of clothes is more limited than air, clothes is worth more than air. It's easy to determine the value of air relative to clothes. If I charge you a dime for the air you breath, I'm ripping you off, if I charge you a dime for a tuxedo, you're ripping me off. Therefore clothes is worth more than air even though people breathe air everyday and need it to survive.
In conclusion: To determine how much something is worth you just need to look at how much people are willing to pay for it, not how much they use it. It's the law of Supply and demand.
That's a highly offensive insult. But I'll take your bait.
Lets talk about the english language and how it's used in conjunction with the word value when discussing certain topics. When we talk about marketing we use the MARKETING DEFINITION of value. When we talk about economics we use the ECONOMIC DEFINITION of value. The definition of a word changes depending on the context. These are typical language concepts that exist both in the English language and other languages as well.
Since we are talking about the law of supply and demand I would venture a guess that we're talking about economics rather than marketing. Thus by context and by common sense we are using the ECONOMIC DEFINITION of value. See the ECONOMIC DEFINITION of value below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(economics)
The quote below on "what is the definition of value?" is taken directly from the wikipedia link above and is located in the first paragraph:
"the maximum amount of money a specific actor is willing and able to pay for the good or service"
Try going through that sentence with a dictionary at hand.
If an item is not for sale it usually means there is either no supply, an unlimited supply, or no demand. See what happens when the supply of clean air is limited below:
https://news.vice.com/article/beijings-air-is-so-bad-the-sal...
>You remember, the item you claimed it's worthless?
I do. What of it? There are people in this world who will pay nothing for that item because it is freely downloadable through piracy. To them, the item is worthless.
Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Two comments made by him I found insulting and provoking:
>You must be new to the internet.
and
>I think I found your problem: you're not familiar enough with the English language.
Although these personal attacks on me are no excuse for me to return these personal attacks, I feel that stefantalpalaru needs to be warned against such negative comments as well. Just warning me feels unfair and unjust and I would appreciate it if you reprimanded or warned people in a way that would make the situation fair and just. It doesn't feel good at all when the provocateur didn't even get a warning.
We all need to work on remaining civil even when provoked, though.
Except food, fashion, boats, building etc. You can copy essentially any piece of clothing while " stealing the up-front investment of the producer".
So the fashion industry have worked out their own added value in forms of heritage, luxury and exclusivity. Just like people who sell open source add value with trust, support and consulting. And people who sell games add value with multiplayer, statistics and achievements.
Less copyright means more labor not less. More performances, more innovation, more consulting. If that's a good thing and when it's not is of course a discussion in itself.
Let me rephrase that: you get access only to the culture you can afford.
We don't care about the common good, we just care about getting rich. At some point we got the actor with a monopoly on violence to guarantee our artificial control over copy rights and now it's our God given right to impose it.
But that's not possible. Technical locks can be overridden rather easily. The reality is that selling digital copies of anything is not a solid business model and it can only be kept in place by bullies with a monopoly on violence.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the answer is with copying. But I have a strong belief that everybody should be able to enjoy all information and media, whether or not they have a relatively limitless supply of cash to blow.
1. Abolish copyright law
2. Creators suffer and can't survive
3. People that have money and love the work of these creators see their suffering and give them support
This way creators can still be supported and people without money can enjoy all of the beauty of creation.