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Old 04-02-2013, 17:33   #11
Shabbaman
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Socrates View Post
Artists are free to do their stuff as a living and get paid for their work. But immaterial goods are not the only stuff they can deliver.
CBA about artists, I'm more concerned with big pharmaceutical companies, or, well, other scientists. If you quote my reports without at least referencing the source, my company will sue you. They might even do that if you quote without consent, though I doubt that. Research costs money. Writing songs/books/movies/software costs money. If I copy a song without consent, or plagiarize a song for my own gain, then I expect to be sued. As it is, there's not much legal difference between my reports, a blockbuster movie, or anti-aids medicine. Someone paid for it, and expecting to get it for free is naive. There is no free lunch.

What you are referring to is a different revenue model. A lot of artists don't care if you copy their work, as long as you pay to see them. Getting your work copied is basically free promotion. Good for musicians, still not good for pharmaceutical companies. Good for me though, as long as you use references. While this example clearly works for musicians, I seriously doubt this works for major Hollywood movies. Or pharmaceutical companies. It's hard to make distinctions between these obviously different categories with intellectual property as a starting point.

However, all of these "categories" were filthy rich in the past, and are filthy rich now. The damage done by copying can't be that bad. I think the damage done to society by intellectual property laws are larger than the damage done to the intellectual proprietors (?) by copying. Think excessive costs for medicine, patent trolling etc.
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Old 04-02-2013, 19:45   #12
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- ProPain -

Musicians actually can make money from audio recording. Consider these ideas: CD (material good), special edition CD for fans (Nine Inch Nails), donations (Radiohead)...
For movies, cinema has never been so high, and has legit value (you actually go out and enjoy the movie on a large screen).
As for writers, there is still a market for plain old books.
Overall, there are definite ways to make money out of cultural products. Just, why would I pay for something that is worth zero euro to copy? That is why I will never ever buy a mp3 or whatever or pay a monthly fee for digital files on iTunes or Spotify. This makes no sense to me. Basically, a digital copy is not a theft, it is a copy. When I copy, the original work is still there, it is not stolen. That is the new paradigm which is so hard to accept.
There are plenty of business models already existing or to be invented though.

Agree on advantages of digital distribution. BUT, before, I could buy a video game on a CD-ROM, install multiple times on different PC, play alone or with friends, offline or online. I have no experience with Steam, but from what I have heard, you are basically locked to one platform. How is that a progress? Trade the uselessness of a CD-ROM for more constraints?
Also it is just personal preference here.

- Shabba -

I am not an anarchist. Free licences often/always require one thing: to cite the original author of whatever work. For example, all existing versions of Creative Commons licences have the item BY, which requires to cite the author.

I am not familiar at all with the pharmaceutical industry, and it is probably a bit off-track here. As it is probably a more sensible field than music, I suppose I have nothing to add to this debate regarding that.

I am not for a ban of intellectual property, rather for a major rework of that concept. Notice how much this has gone crazy since the early 20th century (thank you Disney).

There are solutions, but not much that majors/governments want to hear about. Think "global licence" (heavily debated in France lately) or "global patronage" (Stallman). These ideas enforce/propose citizens to pay a contribution to artists. As long as it is in the law and can be seen as fair, I have no problem against that.

Basically my point is: Technology has made some business models obsolete, concerned industries have to evolve or die. If I can get something for free (ie. technically there is something as free lunch), why try putting it as non-free? This is not how economics work! My point is purely based on logic but, yes, has no compassion for artists, and even less to majors.
In the end, only the famous and rich artists could get hit by a new model. The vast majority of artists do not rely on selling records.
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Old 05-02-2013, 00:25   #13
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You're argument boils down to: if I can copy it without any cost, it has no value

You might believe this to be true, I don't. Here's why:

Someone invested time and/or money into creating the original, they charge for that investment. This is not new, when you buy a book or CD (or any product for that matter) you're not just paying for the costs of manufactering but the development costs as well. When you pay €20 for a book, that's not just covering print costs, you're paying the writers salary too. You're digital copy is free argument comes down to: You can only recoup these costs when packaged with a physical object. Talk about putting a damper on innovation.

So as value does not equal 'cost of the physical product', making an illegal copy is stealing. You're taking away an opportunity for someone to make a living for the time they invested.

Let's say I spend 6 months writing a book. Once it is released I sell one copy and that single copy is copied 1 million times. Result: 1 million people had a good read, I worked for nothing for 6 months and the bank is trying to evict me because I can't pay the morgage. Just plain wrong.

Now I'm not saying the present IP legislation is perfect, not at all. But work needs to be paid cause people need to eat. Simple as that


Quote:
Basically, a digital copy is not a theft, it is a copy. When I copy, the original work is still there, it is not stolen. That is the new paradigm which is so hard to accept.
Bad argument as same can be said about stealing a CD: "Not really theft, original master recording is still there."

Again value isn't something restricted to physical goods. And thank god for that cause I'm willing to bet that most of us on this forum would be living under a bridge if it were.
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Old 05-02-2013, 00:53   #14
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I have 3Gb plan for $20 per month. Never can get close even to 1Gb. I read news/forums and check all emails, sometimes play chess. Also, 4G LTE is somewhat slow, at least in DC. It is actually quite slow and very annoyingly so. But this stuff changes your life. No more wondering when the bus comes, just dial the GPS Metro website and it will tell what and when comes. I'm becoming very addicted and rely a lot on the phone.

Casual arguments and conversations about a specific subject turn into googling things and netting a result immediately. Which saves a lot of time and mental energy.

With regard to copyright, I have a few patents, mostly in pharmaceutical area. Never sold anything, but still would like to keep the options there open.

I do buy software/games just because Open Office (Apache version these days) is plain ugly and you need to stay synched with your Windows things at work. But I never buy music or clips or whatever. Also, I did not buy the first Hobbit (there are obviously no DVDs yet), just torrented it and did not like it much. But I bought Farscape complete (with Peacekeepers Wars), Kill Bill, and a few other things which I specifically like. Same with Game of Thrones. Cannot be arsed to get a cable TV and moreover the HBO subscription. It's like $50 per month here and I barely have time to watch BBC news (starting to like Al Jazeera more recently). There is no alternative and you cannot buy DVD with GoT, so that also got torrented. I promised myself to buy the disks to compensate since it is actually very good and enjoyable. Whether I'll do it or not, not sure. Would probably depend on how reasonable the price is going to be on a set.

Also, I play a lot of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, so I bought all DLCs for the game and actually have not played them yet. It is just for the first time since Civ3 and/or Civ4 there is a game where I put a lot of free time. Almost every moment at home I'm not eating, cooking, cleaning, or sleeping, or talking over the phone, I play ME3. The complexity is amazing and the people are very nice although mostly a bit too young, especially the ladies. I think my situational awareness is not what it used to be 10 years ago and thus, I suck on higher difficulties but I try to hold my own there as much as I can.

Not sure about Open Source vs Windows polemics. Half of our students use Macs and I recently was forced to use iPAD and iPhone for a few days while traveling. That is really bad. Compared to Apple, Windows is actually quite decent. And Linux just still does not have enough stuff on it. Very few pieces of professional software run normally on Linux.
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Old 05-02-2013, 01:00   #15
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Quote:
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This is moving to the debate about piracy, but oh well. ...
There cannot be any debate about piracy. Regardless of what you think of it, it is either a crime to pirate things or not a crime according to local laws. If you break the laws, you are stealing. If you get caught, there can be repercussions. That's all there is.

/subject IMO
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Old 05-02-2013, 10:06   #16
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I am not familiar at all with the pharmaceutical industry, and it is probably a bit off-track here. As it is probably a more sensible field than music, I suppose I have nothing to add to this debate regarding that.
My post isn't as clear as I want. The reason I bring up the pharmaceutical industry is that that is something we all benefit from, yet at the same time costs us a lot of money. It's even killing people too poor to buy medicines (think aids in africa). We could discuss whether or not it is necessary to give Lady Gaga more money, but the morality of that case isn't as clear cut. I feel that having good medicine shows that research pays off. Intellectual property rights protect that research, making the world a better place (or changing nothing at all, if you are poor and dying of aids in Africa). Something like that. So, you pay for that product. You can't claim intellectual property rights are meaningless just because it's the work of an artist. You can't bend a law for a single aspect just because it suits you.

Obviously there's a lot going wrong with copyright and patents. It will even limit innovation at times. There's the concept of fair use though, so if you want to get something for free you can always say that's fair use. In your example of artists earning from concerts instead of album sales, copying music for free could be seen as fair use. Seeing how a lot of people pay monthly fees for streaming services, 10 euros a month for using your free collection is probably fair use though.

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If I can get something for free (ie. technically there is something as free lunch), why try putting it as non-free? This is not how economics work!
You can get a bread for free as well. That's called stealing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by akots View Post
There cannot be any debate about piracy. Regardless of what you think of it, it is either a crime to pirate things or not a crime according to local laws. If you break the laws, you are stealing. If you get caught, there can be repercussions. That's all there is.

/subject IMO
Well, I brought up the point because it is used as an argument by our government to ban websites. Censorship is only a small step from net neutrality. I think both boil down to the piracy debate anyway, since most traffic is used for either (paid for in hard cash or ads!) streaming video/music or illegal downloads. What made the subject relevant in the Netherlands was the revenue lost by mobile providers through the use of VOIP and Whatsapp. This doesn't use a lot of bandwith, yet the companies mixed some claims about "heavy data users" (people who watch youtube on their phone, basically) putting a strain on the network with the loss of revenue as an excuse to ask for more money (or rather, they aimed for breaking net neutrality in the first place, which they were entitled to based on their own contracts with their users (and I'm fine with that: just read the contract before you sign it); VOIP always was banned on mobile networks).
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Old 05-02-2013, 10:50   #17
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Shabba, well worded, I totally agree with your points.

For me the piracy/stealing/local laws debate isn't that relevant. If you look past that all the main question is: Should you be able to charge for your intellectual works.

The pharmaceutical industry is an interesting example because developing a new medicine usually costs tens of millions of dollars. Essentially a medicine is nothing more than a chemical formula and obviously a chemical formula can be copied without cost. So following Socra's reasoning it should be free to do so.

It's clear that the people copying the formula can make the medicine for a fraction of the cost, they don't need to regain the development cost. A model like this would quickly kill development.
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Old 05-02-2013, 11:26   #18
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Or it would kill patents. Reverse-engineering is a lot of work, but if you don't reveal the source that's how your competition would need to reconstruct your product. It's a good defense method. Would non-disclosure of the source be a bad thing? Maybe it'd even speed up innovation, as people would pay for the best product instead of the only product that is available because the competition is non-existent.
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Old 05-02-2013, 12:18   #19
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I think that, yes, if I can make a copy that costs me zero euro, then the delivered work has no value. It is just... maths.
In short, why producing some stuff with no value, instead of trying to get money from that through other means? Once again, there are plenty of ideas, artists be creative, that is your freaking job after all! It looks like most of them just like the comfort associated with signing for a music major.

If I just wanted to make one thing clear in this debate, this would be the following: copying a digital file is not stealing. Stealing is taking away a good from someone. When I go to a store, grab a DVD and run away with it, I steal it: the DVD is no longer in the store. The original work is still there, but it will cost something to create a new plastic-made DVD to compensate. When I illegally copy a movie online, nothing is stolen: what is missing on the other hand? The object "movie" was copied thanks to immaterial property. You cannot copy a DVD today. Not in the sense that, you put the DVD in a machine, and voilà, a new DVD is created out of thin air.
This is the very technological reason why there has been a debate for 15 years.

Let's take another example. Linux is, whatever you think, a great accomplishment. Just do not just think of the ratio of Linux users on the desktop (think servers, super-computers and... Android!).
And it comes for... free. As in beer AND as in speech. It costs me zero euro to download it (save power). This does not mean the development cost is zero euro, far from it. Many people get paid for that. How does it work? Well, many major companies hire excellent programmers to regularly add some stuff to the kernel.
I am not going to propose several solutions for every field concerned here. Just, it does not come down to just producing some stuff and sell it through digital files.

Also, many people understand the need to support creation. Many, many examples show that people are willing to give financial support to musicians, movie makers, etc. And it works. And they still get a digital copy in the end. But they do give beforehand.
Another example: Humble Bundles for video games. This has been a large success for independent video game studios many times. And Linux users gave more than users of other desktops BTW.
You cannot prevent people from sharing anyway. France has tried hard to do so and has miserabily failed (Hadopi law).

And of course you would be amazed to know how much artists actually get from selling music: peanuts. Intermediate agents get most of it. Why should we support this?

I agree that piracy is illegal. What I propose is that it becomes legal. Why? Because I think it would be fair (and logical). When the law is outdated, just change it!
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Old 05-02-2013, 13:00   #20
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Quote:
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If I just wanted to make one thing clear in this debate, this would be the following: copying a digital file is not stealing. Stealing is taking away a good from someone. When I go to a store, grab a DVD and run away with it, I steal it: the DVD is no longer in the store. The original work is still there, but it will cost something to create a new plastic-made DVD to compensate. When I illegally copy a movie online, nothing is stolen: what is missing on the other hand? The object "movie" was copied thanks to immaterial property. You cannot copy a DVD today. Not in the sense that, you put the DVD in a machine, and voilà, a new DVD is created out of thin air.
This is the very technological reason why there has been a debate for 15 years.
If you copy or "lent heavily" from a painting, or a car design, nothing is taken away. So that is not plagiarism? If James Bond goes to China and makes pictures of their secret attack plans, nothing is taken away. So that is not espionage? You own something that is not lawfully yours. Whether you call this stealing, fraud or whatever else from the books of law is nitpicking: it doesn't make it legal.
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