Copyright again ... potentially a serious problem.

Mxsmanic writes:

Whisky-dave writes:

How would you work out this financial compensation while you make
10s or 1000s of copies to share out ? Seems like purchasing or
renting is the way to go.

This type of compulsory licensing is already in place for cover versions of
songs, which is why so many people cover songs written by others. It works
just fine.

Not at all clear on that. Musicians at all levels are pretty displeased
with the system, and it's blocking use of music in a lot of cases due to
the size of the ASCAP fees.
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| So I see no justification for the public paying her way.
|
| Same reason everybody pays taxes to finance public libraries,
| regardless of whether they read books or not.

That's a little different. Libraries are not paying anyone
who claims to be an artist. They buy books/CD/DVDs, based
on decisions by librarians, and then lend those out. You
can't just go in and get a copy of anything you want at
the library. And neither Lady Gaga nor any book author
can apply to libraries for a paycheck. You can borrow
a copy of a library book *if* the librarians thought it was
worth buying a copy, and *if* that copy isn't already on
loan. Then you have to bring that book back without
keeping a copy.

In other words, libraries do exactly what you don't think
anyone should have to do: They buy copyrighted material
legally and don't make further copies.


| Where I live in the Netherlands, there is already a special tax
| on information to compensate for the fact that people are legally allowed
| to copy most things for personal use (books, movies, music, etc..),

That's an interesting idea, though it's hard to translate
it to different countries. I saw a TV show once about how
in the Netherlands you can claim to be an artist and get
supported. They showed warehouses full of paintings that
the government had bought from painters as a kind of
welfare payment. Maybe that's where your "information
tax" is going: To put failed painters on the gov't payroll.
(We have a saying in the US: "Nice work if you can get it.")

You're not paying people outside the Netherlands with your
"art tax", but I suppose that as long as you're only copying
those paintings in Dutch warehouses, or playing songs
by failed Dutch musicians, then you do have a right to take
them.

"Mayayana" writes:

| There is no stealing involved in p2p filesharing whatsoever. You
| might as well call if murder or rape if you are going to call
| it theft.
| But demonize filesharing all you want, it's merely copyright
| infringement and it's inevitable the day will soon come when
| copyright infringement will not just be legal, but it will
| actually be encouraged and it will be called "sharing
| information".
|
| So, what, you plan to completely destroy the professions "musician",
| "songwriter", "arranger", "conductor", "novelist", "screenwriter",
| "director", "actor", all the craft jobs associated with film and TV
| production, and so forth? You think people will create art that takes
| hundreds of man-years of time, costing many millions (or hundreds of
| millions) of dollars, without some way to get the viewers to pay for it?
|

That seems to be a pretty good synopsis of the
two views:

Young people who don't know what it means
to work for a living think that everything should be
free. (It always has been for them, after all.)

At the other extreme are James Cameron, Steven
Spielberg, George Lucas, TV producers, the corporations
that invent and market new bands, bestseller authors,
etc. who like to call themselves artists and make a big
deal about the presumed value of their creations.

But much of what they're producing is essentially
a business venture meant to profit by titillating some
part of the public enough that those people will pay
for the pleasure. In other words, it's entertainment,
which is actually the opposite of art, insofar as art
implies something edifying and entertainment is really
just emotional masturbation. Art requires effort and
attention. Entertainment is an escape from effort and
attention.

Well, I might agree about the definition -- but it doesn't matter. I
*want* people to continue producing the type of entertainment I enjoy!
And most of them won't if they don't get paid.

In between the two extremes in the copyright debate
are people creating art, or at least trying to. An artist
does it for its own sake and rarely makes money. Which
is not to say that poverty is noble. It's just that art is
not a business venture.

Copyright is meant to serve the public by supporting
creativity. (With the term creativity I'm assuming there's
some artistic value involved and not just some kind of
unique item.) The latest marketer-designed boy
band aimed at vacuuming money from 12-year-old girls
can hardly be called art.... Likewise with Cameron's Avatar,
a silly, megahit version of Saturday morning cartoons....
And the endless stream of romance novels and glib social
commentary books. Do those people really deserve to
make millions of dollars? Would society suffer without them?

They *do* deserve to make millions of dollars, in the only way such a
question is meaningful: the path from the audience enjoying the
performance, to the money leaving the audience's pocket, is about as
short and direct as it ever gets.

Society would not suffer much without them, I don't think. But society
*would* suffer, terribly, if it were structured so people like us got to
make that decision *for others*.

How do we decide how much creativity is worth? In
the US it was decided awhile back by Disney lobbyists
buying a Congressional vote when the Mickey Mouse
copyright was due to expire.

It seems that we have to come up with a clear distinction
between art, entertainment and business before copyright
law can really be fair to all involved... and before there can
be any hope of appealing to someone like sobriquet to be
honest and decent. He/she knows perfectly well, instinctively
if not consciously, that much of the Hollywood machine is
just sleazy manipulation for profit. That makes it very easy
to rationalize theft. ...To blame either side exclusively would
be missing the big picture.

The trouble with this is that defining "art" and distinguishing it is
completely hopeless.

The other problem is that it's actually the "entertainment" category I
really care about.
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Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

On 2012-11-15 10:07:44 -0800, sobriquet said:

On Thursday, November 15, 2012 6:02:45 PM UTC+1, Savageduck wrote:
On 2012-11-15 07:43:01 -0800, sobriquet said:


Ok, demonize filesharing as theft. I demonize such people who demonize
filesharing as Nazi cockroaches. A little over the top, but likewise
I think it's way over the top to accuse people of being thieves or
parasites when all they are doing is reproducing information.
What internet filesharing really boils down to is people who collect
and exchange bitstrings. Things like 0010101110101100000011001, except
usually the bitstrings are much longer.
These bitstrings can be anything. Movies, software, music, text, pictures,
etc.. But that doesn't detract from the fact that they are bitstrings.

We have been through your rationalizations at tedious length before.
What you fail to address is, there is a big difference between
"sharing", "dissemination of information", and "distribution" of an
individually, proprietary, or corporately owned product or media file.


It seems your mind is a corporately owned product of some sort.

Far from it.

If you were able to think critically and independently for
yourself, you'd see through this obvious propaganda from the
intellectual property mafia. Heck, we can't even seriously claim
that we're living in a democracy, because people are brainwashed
in school and by the media, rather than learning to think
critically for themselves. So all this bull**** about voting
for elected representatives in the government is just a
phony show, while the government is actually a shady extension
of corporate interests rather than a neutral institution that
guarantees human rights.

....and your point is?
Just another torrent of words to rationalize your criminal thinking.

Just because a legitimate method of commercial distribution can be via
the internet, does not make unauthorized copying, and redistribution
via P2P sites, and subsequent unauthorized use, any less immoral and
theft.


There is nothing immoral about the distribution and reproduction of
information. You might as well call education immoral.

No, but there is certainly something immoral about advocating theft of
intellectual property the owner has not made "public domain".


If a creator of the image, music, movie, etc. choses to protect their
property, and states so, any unauthorized use is theft and
exploitation.

Bull****. Here, I'll create a bitstring 001001011111010000001110001.

Now that's my intellectual property and I can go out on the
internet to find people who have it on their computer and I can
sue and harass them.

If you so chose. However you first have to establish that there is a
market for your bitstring, and that it is desirable to own, just as
those copyright protected bitstrings you want for nothing are something
you covet.
If there is a demand, the market and the creator/vendor will establish
a price, which you can only avoid by stealing it. For now you have not
established nor demonstrated any value for your bitstring, and until
you do so it remains worthless, useless garbage, not even worth
stealing.

Those creative individuals and corporations have every
right to be rewarded for their creative efforts regardless of your
perception of their motives. Those files are far from being declared
"public domain".

They are public domain.

I would check with Sony, Time-Warner, Disney, Geffen, Rhino, Asylum,
BBC, Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, RIAA, etc. before making that
sort of claim for their products and property. I doubt that any of the
listed entities of individuals have waived their rights and suddenly
become charitable in this regard.

My government actually grants people the freedom
to copy such creations (music, video, books, pictures, etc..) for
personal use, regardless of how their original creators feel about it.

Then your government appears to be a criminal enterprise, and I somehow
doubt that.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, try making the same
demand of a food vendor, restauranteur, food franchise, or farmer
(individual or agri-business).

Yet, the difference between such commodities and information
is that information can be duplicated indefinitely free from
additional costs. If I have a single loaf of bread, unless
I'm Jesus, I can't easily multiply it to supply a million
loafs of bread to a hungry crowd.

....and yet you would deny creators of images, movies, software, etc.
the means to purchase the same food items.
You sir, remain a thief at heart, and continue to rationalize your
criminal intent.

...or for that matter any manufacturer of any product, from your
clothing to the table your computer sits on, or the materials they are
fabricated from, and designs they dare to retain copyright of.


The difference being that physical tangible products like
computers or articles of clothing are scarce because they
can't be easily reproduced like information on the internet.

Does that make theft of a desirable item any less theft?
Would you prefer that all the creators and distributors of music,
movies, and software only distribute their wares using media and
methods which included strong DRM encoding? Just because some chose to
distribute their products via the internet does not mean they have made
them public domain.


Even with image files on the great majority of sharing sites, the
ownership and sharing options are retained by the creator.


You must be visiting the wrong sharing sites then.

When I refer to "sharing" sites, I refer to sites such as Flickr,
Photobucket, SmugMug, Picasa, etc, or individual server sites where the
owner/creator of said images uses such "sharing" services to "share"
their images, which they still own and retain copyright.
They don't expect their images to be freely exploited by individuals
such as you, or corporate entities such as news agencies or print media.

If you are referring to P2P sites such as BitTorrent and Pirate Bay
there elements of their operations which are enabling of criminal
behavior. Just because an image, movie, or software is downloadable via
one of those sites, does not mean that it is not being stolen, or its
use not exploited.

For most truly "public domain" files creators would actually prefer
some attribution and will let you know their feelings regarding that
issue by including an appropriate statement in the copyright
information field of the exif of their images.
Consider that there is the simple honoring of a creator's request when
they include a Creative Commons license to their work. I for example
will use the CC "Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike" license
notification. Read it, and try to understand it.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/...3.0/deed.en_US

That is just bull****. You can come up with any nonsense license
you like, but whether people will take it serious is another matter.

Nope! It isn't BS, and certainly not nonsense. It is a notice of the
condition the owner of the image or document expects to be honored in
return for making his/her image available to the "Commons".

Most people just skip all that legal mumbo jumbo and press the OK
button to accept a license without reading it, whenever they
are confronted with that nonsense.

Then they do so at their peril.


All you propose remains a rationalization for theft.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On 11/15/2012 2:11 AM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
sobriquet writes:

There is no stealing involved in p2p filesharing whatsoever. You
might as well call if murder or rape if you are going to call
it theft.
But demonize filesharing all you want, it's merely copyright
infringement and it's inevitable the day will soon come when
copyright infringement will not just be legal, but it will
actually be encouraged and it will be called "sharing
information".

So, what, you plan to completely destroy the professions "musician",
"songwriter", "arranger", "conductor", "novelist", "screenwriter",
"director", "actor", all the craft jobs associated with film and TV
production, and so forth? You think people will create art that takes
hundreds of man-years of time, costing many millions (or hundreds of
millions) of dollars, without some way to get the viewers to pay for it?



He forgets that the key to file sharing is that the first person
posting, must have the right to share it.

--
Peter

On 11/15/2012 6:13 AM, Mxsmanic wrote:
David Dyer-Bennet writes:

So, what, you plan to completely destroy the professions "musician",
"songwriter", "arranger", "conductor", "novelist", "screenwriter",
"director", "actor", all the craft jobs associated with film and TV
production, and so forth? You think people will create art that takes
hundreds of man-years of time, costing many millions (or hundreds of
millions) of dollars, without some way to get the viewers to pay for it?

Their work is already being used illegally, and they have not been destroyed.
As long as the major uses are paid for, there's no problem.

And a lot of these artists have assigned their rights to corporations, anyway,
so they get nothing even if someone pays for a license. A classic example is
the software engineer, who receives only a temporary salary even when creating
software that will bring in millions of dollars in royalties.


So stealing from a corporation is OK?

--
Peter

On Thursday, November 15, 2012 8:14:26 PM UTC+1, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
sobriquet writes:
"What's really needed is regulations that ensure there is a fair system

of financial compensation for those who contribute fresh content on the

one hand, while simultaneously encouraging people to share information freely

and indiscriminately (like on p2p networks). "



Any idea what such a system could be? In particular, how do you decide

how worthwhile some fresh content is, in the face of people aggressively

working to muddy the waters (as we already see on the web, in sites

trolling for search hits to drive ad revenue)?

Well, they already have such a system where I live in the Netherlands.
But I suspect there is a lot of room for improvement and it is likely
to work better when it's done on a global scale.
But like other people have mentioned, there are technological
solutions, like bots that traverse the internet and do pattern
recognition to detect the nature of content and statistically
monitor the relative popularity of certain creations, but there should
probably be a kind of international institution that keeps track of who
contributed to any particular creation.

I might as well ask the proponents of traditional interpretations
of intellectual property how one is supposed to assess who exactly
owns the rights to impose a monopoly on the distribution or reproduction
of any particular bitstring, as people can easily modify such
bitstrings (change the included information about the associated
license or whatever) before redistributing them online.


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On Thursday, November 15, 2012 8:19:18 PM UTC+1, Mayayana wrote:
| So I see no justification for the public paying her way.

|

| Same reason everybody pays taxes to finance public libraries,

| regardless of whether they read books or not.



That's a little different. Libraries are not paying anyone

who claims to be an artist. They buy books/CD/DVDs, based

on decisions by librarians, and then lend those out. You

can't just go in and get a copy of anything you want at

the library. And neither Lady Gaga nor any book author

can apply to libraries for a paycheck. You can borrow

a copy of a library book *if* the librarians thought it was

worth buying a copy, and *if* that copy isn't already on

loan. Then you have to bring that book back without

keeping a copy.



In other words, libraries do exactly what you don't think

anyone should have to do: They buy copyrighted material

legally and don't make further copies.


They offer free access to information, similar to how people can
download information for free online.
If I want to read a book, I have a number of options. I can buy
the book at a bookstore and then I pay for the book. I can go to
the library and read the book there for free. I can also go
online and download that book for free in digital form from
a p2p network.

Whether I access the content of that book for free by
reading it at the library or downloading a copy from a
p2p network, in both cases I'm accessing the content of
the book without directly paying the author of that book
and yet in both cases it would be legal (at least in the
Netherlands where I live).






| Where I live in the Netherlands, there is already a special tax

| on information to compensate for the fact that people are legally allowed

| to copy most things for personal use (books, movies, music, etc..),



That's an interesting idea, though it's hard to translate

it to different countries. I saw a TV show once about how

in the Netherlands you can claim to be an artist and get

supported. They showed warehouses full of paintings that

the government had bought from painters as a kind of

welfare payment. Maybe that's where your "information

tax" is going: To put failed painters on the gov't payroll.

(We have a saying in the US: "Nice work if you can get it.")



You're not paying people outside the Netherlands with your

"art tax", but I suppose that as long as you're only copying

those paintings in Dutch warehouses, or playing songs

by failed Dutch musicians, then you do have a right to take

them.

Actually, I can download just about any content online for
personal use, regardless of where it originated.

On Thursday, November 15, 2012 8:29:26 PM UTC+1, Savageduck wrote:
[..]
You sir, remain a thief at heart, and continue to rationalize your
criminal intent.
[..]

That sums up your misguided position. Fine. As far as I'm
concerned, you are a nazi who advocates a fascistic and
unrealistic interpretation of intellectual property.

On Thursday, November 15, 2012 8:35:21 PM UTC+1, PeterN wrote:
On 11/15/2012 6:13 AM, Mxsmanic wrote:

David Dyer-Bennet writes:



So, what, you plan to completely destroy the professions "musician",

"songwriter", "arranger", "conductor", "novelist", "screenwriter",

"director", "actor", all the craft jobs associated with film and TV

production, and so forth? You think people will create art that takes

hundreds of man-years of time, costing many millions (or hundreds of

millions) of dollars, without some way to get the viewers to pay for it?



Their work is already being used illegally, and they have not been destroyed.

As long as the major uses are paid for, there's no problem.



And a lot of these artists have assigned their rights to corporations, anyway,

so they get nothing even if someone pays for a license. A classic example is

the software engineer, who receives only a temporary salary even when creating

software that will bring in millions of dollars in royalties.





So stealing from a corporation is OK?


Corporations are the real criminals, because they abuse their
influence on the government to subvert laws and regulations
to suit their interests, at the expense of the rights of
individual people (regardless whether they are creative or
not).



--

Peter