The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
That’s not a fair example, because 5 Euros has an intrinsic value. The theft here is of intellectual property. Here’s an analogy:
Stealing involves depriving the original owner of access or possession of the item. Duplication is not stealing because the item being duplicated is not taken away.
Even if you consider it stealing, then what defense do you have for the people who paid the price that would supposedly allow them to have it permanently and suddenly it still gets taken away? That’s not stealing? Even if we accepted that piracy by people who didn’t pay is theft, why should people who already paid for the media not be able to access it from somewhere else if their original access is denied?
By duplicating, you’re depriving the company to the exclusive right to copy that thing. But I don’t think stealing some nebulous concept of a monopoly like that is wrong.
The keywords: company and monopoly.
There is more nuance to it than that. The copyright holder still owns whichever copies are made, whether or not they are made with their permission. One could argue that by making a duplicate, you have taken possession of a copy without consent from its owner.
As for your other example about a copyright owner revoking access; this is completely subject to the terms of sale of that item. Without details of the license agreement it’s impossible to say if the terms were breached.
That is an extremely recent construct largely promoted by the big media companies themselves. For the vast majority of human history, intellectual property was not a thing and works could be freely copied, modified, redistributed, etc and it was considered normal. When copyright first came into effect, it was for a fixed period that was relatively short, after which anyone could use the work however they wanted. That was the original intent of copyright, which was only to give artists an exclusive period to profit from their work without competition, not exclusive rights for all eternity. Disney was the one that lobbied for copyright terms to be extended, then extended again, then again, and critically, extended to include the life of the “person” that created it, but since corporations are also “persons” under the law and just so happen to not have bodies that can die, effectively corporate media is copyrighted forever.
Also, those media companies claim to be such big proponents of intellectual property protection, they would never, ever do the exact same goddamn thing to independent artists, with the only difference being that they actually profit from it when the vast majority of “piracy” is for personal use, and that they know for a fact that independent artists rarely have the resources or time to actually do anything about it, right? Riiiiiiight?
https://mashable.com/article/disney-art-stolen-tiki
https://insidethemagic.net/2023/12/disney-under-fire-for-allegedly-stealing-furry-fanart-ld1/
https://insidethemagic.net/2021/01/super-nintendo-world-stolen-art-ad1
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/27/dbrand-is-suing-casetify-over-stolen-designs/
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/01/looks_like_nintendo_accidentally_used_a_fan-made_mario_render_on_its_website
https://www.thegamer.com/microsoft-joins-sony-in-stealing-art-for-commercials/
https://gamerant.com/sony-stolen-art-playstation-network/
https://ganker.com/sega-stole-from-an-artist-608965/
If anything, shouldn’t small independent artists get more protection under the law if copyright was really meant to benefit artists and safeguard the creative process like it claims it does? The FBI can arrest and jail you for pirating a movie, but when a corporation commits the same crime there isn’t even a whiff of consequences. At this point we really ought to ask what the real purpose of copyright is after all the changes made to it and who it’s actually meant to protect.
Gee, it almost sounds like the laws regarding what they can and can’t put in those terms of sale are nowhere close to fair and were specifically written by the giant media holding companies to exclusively benefit them and screw over the consumer! Laws and regulations can’t possibly be immoral and corrupt right?
To separate the worker from owning the means of production?
Especially telling when it’s the corporation that owns the copyright, and not the actual artists and other workers that actually created it.
I mean, at the low level, sure. “Bart Simpson”, the concept, was created by a person. Bart Simpson, the character, was developed and built as a collaborative effort of several people spanning the course of decades, and continues to be developed by teams of people.
The copyright shouldn’t belong to an individual. The rights to the intellectual property need to be protected, but so too do the rights of everyone who contributed to building it.
Unfortunately, corporations are really the closest proxy we really have.
Thats what’s really exciting about new media, and small time collaborators, and niche content. HomeStar Runner doesn’t belong to Disney, or Fox, or Viacom. He belongs to the small group of people who created him and his friends. The same could be said for Kurzgesagt, or The Lockpicking Lawyer, or both the Nostalgia and Angry Video Game nerds.
The corporations exist to extract as much ownership as possible from the creative class, it is not a proxy ownership by those doing the collaborative work. See the recent WGA strike as an example. Unions and co-ops are the proxies, not corporations.
[citation needed]
The closest thing we have to “representation proxy to a community of people who helped author a thing” is an author’s guild, for example. And things like the Writers’ Guild already exist, I’m sure there’s a Drawers’ Guild too. Not as close, but more solidly defined, would be a union, oh guess what? We have those, too.
In comparison, a “corporation” has a whole lotta fat.
Corporations don’t need you to shill for them.
I think my point is getting lost in the one pro-corporate part of it…the corporation is responsible for nearly all of the risk, and that investment is what ultimately creates the content. They absolutely do deserve some stake in its IP, just not necessarily nearly as much as they currently have.
This is why I love new media. Low enough startup costs that small individuals and small groups could easily creat and own their own content and IP. It’s really the big investments that complicate everything.
It used to be necessary to sell your soul to the establishment to get your content in front of a large audience, but it’s not anymore.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s only in this specific context and conversation that I would call Google the good guys, or at least the lesser of two evils. Obviously context matters.
Accidentally deleted my comment. Spelling…
To separate the worker from owning the means of production?
Dude, thank you for reminding me I’m not fucking insane.
I absolutely agree with you that the arguments you put forward is the way it should be. However, currently, as we see here in the case of Sony, there is a perceived unfairness in what consumers expect from a license agreement and what is in fact in them.
Time will tell if our judicial system acknowledges that it’s reasonable to assume that if you are offered a digital good “to buy” that it will remain available ad infinitum and hence Sony held to be liable.
In a strict legal sense I think you are right. There is some good rationale for copyright, going all the way back to the 1700s, I think. Most artists pretty much need copyright in order to survive. Also, yes, companies should have the ability to freely negotiate contracts, and to have legal protection against someone breaking those contracts. And, yes, these slogans about piracy not being stealing are legally unsophisticated and facile. That said, you can probably sense the “however” coming…
HOWEVER, the context is important. All law is based on an implied social context. When companies engage in practices that poison the market, they break the implied social contract underlying the laws that protect them. The result is retaliatory behavior by consumers. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about media and games or food prices. People will steal when they feel the law, as applied in a particular social context, is no longer fair. It isn’t morally right, but it isn’t exactly wrong either. It’s more of an inherent market mechanism to curtail shitty corporate behaviour, and that’s why governments tend not to interfere too much with individual downloading.
When there is no easy way for consumers to fight back, that’s when governments need to get involved. Ridiculously high drug prices being a good example.
I believe we are arguing the same side of the argument.
The action is still harmless. Information should be free.
https://www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html
How is creating a popular a novel any different than creating a popular object? Hundreds of hours of labor go into both and the creators are entitled to the full value of said labor.
Say you have an amazing story about the vacation you took last year, and told all your friends about it. You would justifiably be pissed if you later found out one of your friends was telling that story as if they had done it. It’s the same for someone who writes a book or any other form of media.
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We aren’t talking about plagiarism, the friend would be telling the story about you still.
Spoken word narratives are such an integral part of culture, imagine if your grandpa told you to never repeat any of the stories of his childhood because “he owns the copywrite”. Insane. That’s what you are suggesting.
Ideas are not objects. Having good ideas shared incurs no loss to anybody, except imagined “lost potential value”.
I’m saying that those who create are entitled to the value of what they create. If a company asks to look iver some of your work before hiring you, says that they aren’t interested, and then you see them using that work afterwards i doubt you would be saying “well, information should be free”.
If you want to write stories, draw pictures, make movies or webshows and distribute then for free ti everyone, then that’s a noble initiative, but creatives depend on what they create for their livelyhood.
Here I was thinking we all deserved a giant meteor.
The publisher example is one of a difference in power and you’re saying that IP is there to protect the author. Except this whole video is about how that doesn’t happen anymore. The law is written and litigated by those with power.
That happens already.
If the situation is reversed, the hammer comes down on the independent artist.
We need stronger worker and consumer protections. Copywrite is a shit solution.
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I do see where you’re coming from, but not necessarily. If my friend has zero interest in ever buying said book (or can’t afford to) and would never become a paying customer, there is no downside to sharing a copy. In fact, if they like the book enough, they may even become incentivized to buy themselves a copy or look into the author’s other work legitimately when they otherwise wouldn’t have.
This is how/why I pirate most games. I don’t have the type of pocket money to spend on games I don’t know I’ll love, so I pirate them first. If they’re good enough, I’ll buy the actual game on steam later. Spider-Man, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cassette Beasts, etc. are all games I plan to buy when I can afford to. And I can promise I never would have bought Slime Rancher 2 if I hadn’t pirated the first one at some point and enjoyed it.
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There is a difference here between lending or resale of a physical product. Can you sell a second hand book? Typically, yes. Can you do mental gymnastics to draw a parallel to reselling a digital version? Evidently, also yes.
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FTFY.
Including your personal information?
Strawman. Is intellectual property the same as personally identifiable information? Can you doxx a director using their movie?
Comment I replied to said information.
No reasonable person who says “information should be free” is also lumping in PII with that. It’s clear from the context in this thread that they are referring to media and knowledge (seeing how the post itself was about media and everyone has been discussing the justifiability of things like piracy amid the erosion of digital ownership), not about posting where people live and shit, so you bringing up personal information is at best a misunderstanding of what the saying “information should be free” actually means or at worst a logical fallacy and deliberate attempt to derail the conversation.
Also, just saying, personal information is currently free regardless of whether or not it should be or whether it’s legal or ethical. There are thousands of websites indexable by search engines that list people’s information for anyone to take, mostly from data breaches or otherwise scraped from the internet. It’s one of the main ways scammers get your contact info. There are even websites specifically dedicated to archiving doxxes, hosted in jurisdictions with no privacy laws so the victim can never get it removed. Search your own phone number or email, I bet you’ll find it listed somewhere possibly with a ton of your other information. Unlicensed movies are immediately struck off the internet as soon as they’re discovered though, funny how the law takes pirating movies more seriously than the posting of private information that can literally ruin people’s lives and make them a target of assault, stalking, vandalism, etc.
What is exactly “information” in this statement? Is a feature length movie “information” that needs to be shared freely? At 4K freely or will HD suffice for the meaning? Or is it just a plot summary? I’m in the camp that will argue just the latter.
That second dot should be when you make an identical copy of the book without taking it from the shelf. When I get an unlicensed copy of a book, the original is never out of place, not for a moment
Piracy was huge in Australia back when films were released at staggered times across the world. If it was a winter release in America, it would release six months later in the Australian winter. Try avoiding spoilers online for six months.
Piracy is less now because things are released everywhere at once and we aren’t harmed by a late release
Now when companies pull shit like deleting content you think you bought, they encourage people to go around them. Play Station can’t be trusted? Well there are piracy channels that cost only a VPN subscription (and only while you’re collecting media, not after, while watching and storing it) and people will be pushed to those
Nani?
If what you care about is the abstract idea that the idea of something can be owned, whether the book is in the library or in my pocket doesn’t change the fact that the idea of the book is by the author. I can move the book wherever - across even national borders if I want to - and that “intrinsic value” doesn’t change.
Only if you subsequently distribute it does that “theft” break the law.
Also money doesn’t actually have intrinsic value. It’s just fancy paper. Things like food and shelter and clothing, and the tools and materials with which to make them, that’s what intrinsic value is.
Making a copy without the copyright is against the law, no matter which way you slice it. Egregious large-scale infringement is usually prosecuted, whereas it’s otherwise settled civilly. Nevertheless, both constitute copyright infringement.
Indeed I had the terms confused: it’s incorrect to say fiat currency has intrinsic value; it has instrumental value.