I disagree, strongly, in fact. One of the base concepts of Copyright, current RIAA and MPAA efforts aside, is that copying is done "not for profit" and as precedent and I believe codified as law, that it does not diminish the value of the work.
If I am unlikely to ever by a particular work and I do not attempt to resell anything, the copyright owner loses nothing by my use of the copyrighted work.
The analogy is based on news paper. If I fish a newspaper out of the trash, I have deprived no one of that newspaper. I can read the newspaper. The copyright owner of the content has not been compensated by my use. I came across the work under "fair use." I have every right to use it.
An even better analogy, for software. If I get a copy of software, who cares what. It isn't something I would ever buy, but if someone gives me a copy, I should be able to use it as long as: I do not profit from it and my use of it does not diminish the value of the work.
That's how we lived in the 80s it was a better way to live. This DMCA ridden IP crazy world is the death of freedom of expression.
These days I use Linux and GPL software, it is just safer.
In the case of the guy posting your book on usenet, that is a clear violation because it can be argued that it diminishes the value of your work, and that's wrong.
: Rethink this. Hard or soft goods, you're not stealing a *thing*, you're : taking away from a person the *value* of the thing. When software is : pirated you are depriving the creator -- more often than not an : individual or a small company -- from the livlihood they would have made
Depriving someone of income is not necessarily theft. It could be embezelment, fraud, larceny, dumping (selling your stuff below cost to get rid of competitors) -- I'm sure there are more.
I understand your position as a small businessman (Am There, Doing That), but at the same time the PR campaign that "Copyright Infringement is Theft" ticks me off, because legally is is NOT, at least not yet, and it seems somewhat disingenuous coming from companies that have been routinely screwing their artists for years.
: WTFF do I care if I still have my original? -- in my case, a manuscript. : I'm in the specific business of selling the copies! To an author or : artist this argument makes zero sense.
I think you just made my point for me.
If I am churning out illegal copies of your book, you may be out some sales of books you might have sold. Or you might not, if I'm incompetent and can't actually distribute them to anyone.
If I steal your original manuscript[1], you can't make any copies at all and most definitely can't sell anything to anyone. If I'm incompetent and destroy it, you're screwed permanently.
So, let's say I hire you to do some work for me. Maybe you're a lawyer and I need you to write my will. You turn over the work and I accept it.
Only, I don't pay you. By the definition you've given, what harm have I done to you, seeing I didn't *take* anything away from you? Or haven't I. You never had my money to begin with, so it's not like I took it away from you. But didn't I just taken away from you your hard work, effort, and skill for MY benefit, without giving you anything in return? Or is stealing only limited to tangible things, like candy bars or TV sets? I don't think so.
Apply this to the situation where the business model is based on selling multiple copies of something. This model provides a way for someone to impart knowledge or skill or talent at a price that everyone can afford. Without the multiple copies business model, the person would have to charge a single recipient a tremendous amount, and few could afford it. This is how copyrights directly benefit the public. But somehow, a portion of the public think it's not enough to be have cheap books or music or sofrware, they think it shouldn't cost anything at all.
When works were difficult to copy, or the copies were inferior, this made some sense. It didn't pay much to go after casual copying, because it was a thin minority of the business. Digital copying changes that. Multiply the incidences of the copies by the ease with which they can be made, and a work could easily be distributed far wider without pay than with it. Tell me how this doesn't "diminish the value" the work. In copyright (not trademark) the value is the total sales.
Poor analogy. The cost of the newspaper pays for the printing of that copy. Newspapers make money on the ads, which you are exposed to the same as the original purchaser. Magazines and newspapers encourage such re-reading.
Lame. If you don't value it enough to buy it, why are you using it? If you're using it and the person who wrote it expected to be paid, then you're talking something and giving back nothing. That's called stealing. There is enough good software openly given away that there is ASBOLUTELY NO reason to make these kinds of excuses.
How do you know "today" what is worthy "tomorrow." I have many CD (and used to have albums) that I purchased over a decade ago, and find that I like different tracks than the ones I did when I originally bought the CD. Art grows with you, or at least it should.
I have the Burt Reynolds movie "Hooper," and I watched it the other day. When I was young, I identified with the character "ski" (the young kid) and now I am more established and experienced, I identify more with "Sonny." (Burt's character) It is not long until I will identify with the older character "Jocko."
As "art," the movie was a typical light weight Burt Reynolds good ol'boy film, but it really was a treatment of growing older. Three generations: beginner, expert, and aging master. Of course there was a lot of car crashes, beer, and fights, but it was art damn it!!
Anyway, your tastes change as you get older. I recognize it more the older I get. Reducing an artist message to one small clip that you may be momentarily attracted too, will probably blind you to the larger and deeper message that a true artist wishes to convey.
Britney Spears, that isn't art, it is product. Arranged and mixed by people who want to sell albums. That works for the MP3 download world.
Well, that is a known problem with the current music business.
I read this one time: A computer file can not be made uncopyable any more than water can be made unwet.
There is an amount of zen you have to use. It is easy to get mad about certain things, but one needs to thing a little more broad mindedly.
I've been writing software for over 20 years. Not many people have the luxury of making money on their software. Yea, there are a number of companies that do but for every Microsoft there are at least a thousand software companies that go out of business each year. For every small consultant or software house that sustains a living with software NRE time, there are tens of thousands who do not.
Believe me, I wish I could write something once and sell it over and over again, but it hasn't worked that way, and unless you have a particular vertical market that you have been particularly good at targeting, I don't see how it can.
I is precisely capitalism that says your stuff will be copied. There is no economic limit to copying, only a repressive legal regime that forbids it. Capitalism always wins.
It is far more complex. If I copy a file and you never know it, I never sell it, and I would never have bought it in the first place, has any harm been done? How about if I have it, someone hears it, and then buys it? You actually derive benefit from my actions.
Weird. I just looked up most of these words in the dictionary and they're all defined using the word "theft" or "stealing." I don't get your point, but in any case, are things like fraud and larceny okay compared to theft? One is more socially acceptable than the other?
You're just one person. If the practice is acceptable (as you appear to want it to be), multipled by thousands of people who share your view, then how could copying even for personal use yield a sustainable living for anyone? This is a point you're not appearing to grasp. I don't care just about Chris. I acare about Chris X 1,000, or Chris X 10,000.
Um, not at all the point. My original manuscript after the book is published is worth exactly what each copy is worth. If the copies are worthless because of rampant illegal distribution, so is my manuscript.
Actually, your analogy is poor, a lawyer is "work for hire." There is a contract between you and the lawyer that defines what he is expected to do, and how much you are expected to pay him.
In your case, you chose what you wanted to write and the assumed value is the public sales of your product. There is nothing you can enforce.
How easy are those "somethings" to copy?
This may simply be an anomaly of technology. Before the printing press, it was very difficult, one had to teach in person or write by hand. Cost was VERY prohibitive.
With the printing press, it is much easier. Cost was slightly prohibitive and became less so over time.
Now with computers and world wide networks, it is so easy that it may not be a viable business.
Thus, technology has changed, yet again, the business of men. For the better? For the worse? Who knows? It is certain that scribes probably hated the Gutenberg press.
We are in a transitional time. Our old methods of conveying creativity for profit man no longer be viable. Laws to protect business models are bad.
Title 17 U.S.C. disagrees with you. The law says I can enforce my copyrights, and the ownership of copyright confers upon me the same validity as a contractual agreement. If you are a citizen of the US, my declaration of copyright very much forces you to adhere to the laws of the United States, as much as any contract would. In fact, copyright law would probably trump contract law, but that's beside the point.
How does practicality change integrity? If someone forgets their wallet on the top of their car is it okay to just take it? The ease with which a crime can be made in no way diminishes the crime.
No longer viable perhaps if you accept that people are no longer willing to be honest, and will not pay for something that they very happily use. Sadly, in the end people will get LESS rather than more from digital technology. Hope you like DRM.
Copyrights don't protect business models. They do protect people who wish to share their skills or talent with the public, and -- in order to make a living -- use the business model of mass market distribution copies for pay. Take away copyright and the business model goes away, but this doesn't mean copyright law is expressly designed to protect any type of business.
I would like to just inter-ject one comment-If Gordon doesnt write any more books because of theft of works, We the readers of this thread(and uncountable others) will be made to suffer. I personally am hoping for some more technical reading, whether the "market" is or is not ready for it. Personal experience and track records of the volume of reading on this particular resource leads me to think lots of folks want more. I meet them and talk to them everyday. I sure hope ,however the deed that started this thread is corrected. I hope to see more technology get to everyone-Yep even if they have to and should pay for it.
Not the popular, but the ones I like. It is not always that I am in agreement with popular picks. iTunes let me listen to a sample of the music, which is often times enough for me to like or not like a music. But in general, the criteria for an album being worthy or not worthy is highly personal. Sometimes it is worthy independent of the music quality (Vitalogy from Pearl Jam is a very good example).
And a mouse is a word meaning a specific living thing from the animal kingdom.
If you are Microsoft, perhaps. Well, even them are taking more active measures to avoid piracy. And yes, you are taking money from me. While I admire people on the open source initiative (and I sometimes helped the effort), there is this notion around shared by some that software should be free. How come?
Capitalist values may not, but capitalist countries do, and socialist countries even more.
The market is too big to make general assumptions. While the act of distributing mix tapes may have produced a sale or two, I doubt downloading music increase general sales. If it did, the industry wouldn't be so desperate by now.
I'm buying today. I have no means to foresee what I am going to like tomorrow. Apart from vintage value, if I like something else tomorrow, I'll buy it tomorrow. What't the big deal?
We're talking about personal tastes now. Perhaps I may think that Britney Spears music is more art than any Burt Reynolds movie.
They do. When I was 15 I used to like Michael Jackson... I don't know how could I. I had a mullet... what the heck! Give me a razor and a time machine please!
Completely irrelevant to the discussion. I don't buy music because it is art or not. I buy music because I like it or not. I buy albums if they are worthy or not, and I reserve the right to tell if they are worthy or not according to my own criteria, that may or may seem logic by you.
Perhaps not, but there is technology out there to avoid unauthorized use. I'm not naive enough to say that they are completely effective. A pirate will steal from you if he wishes so and have enough skills, as well as a thief will enter into your house and rob you no matter what you do. The challenge is to find the balance between blocking people from making use of your software without being authorized and annoying the legit users to the point they don't buy from you anymore.
I've made money in every company that I owned and/or worked for. If not, I'd be doing something else now. The need for software is big enough to afford a huge market, and if you stay on top of things, you can make a decent living out of it. I'm not denying that it is difficult though, there's competition, and technology is always changing, but busting your ass doing a product to find out that it is being stolen somewhere is not of my liking.
And it is precisely capitalism that tells me (and the whole industry) that copy protection mechanisms are vital for the business.
In theory, if you would never buy it, then why copy in the first place?
In practice, it's never black and white. I like the shareware approach to general applications. Download it and if you like it then you buy. For example, I use an unlicensed MikroPascal copy for firmware development at home, and the software developers were clever enough to allow you to use it like this forever, with the limitation that you cannot compile programs bigger than a certain size. I'm so used to that environment now that I had to buy it here in the company.
It misses serendipity. There are many songs I've liked that never got any airplay, and I never would have heard them if they weren't on the CD. Likewise, I tend to think of a CD as a coherent work (showing my age, I guess), so unless there's something totally unlistenable I listen to the whole thing. There are many songs I've listened to grudgingly on the first hearing, but by the 20th found they were some of my favorites. That wouldn't have happened without the whole CD.
Sorry. Fair use includes copying part of a work under certain circumstanses, but not the whole of a work. This includes non-profit uses.
If it isn't worth it to buy it, thenb it isn't right to use it.
For example, if I have a house that nobody is living in, you cannot live in it without coming to some arrangement with me.
*Sombody* bought the newspaper. At some point this person got tired of it and left it in the trash. In some places you cannot take it even then because the trash belongs to the municipality (yes, it does seem silly).
And "fair use" doesn't come into it if you read the newspaper or even resell it. At this point it's your newspaper.
If you use software that you have not paid for then you are gaining some value that you are not passing back to the copyright owner.
It doesn't matter if you downloaded a copy of the work or somebody gave you a copy.
The DMCA is crazy, but this *isn't* the way *I* lived in the 80s.
Yes. And there are special rules that govern GPL software. You are allowed to sell it, but you must give the source away.
Yes. However it doesn't matter to me if your use of my work actually diminishes the value of the work. If the work isn't paid for, I don't want you using it.
Actually many of the above are classified as theft. Embezelment certainly is as are many of the others. Dumping isn't theft but may or may not be a crime depending on where you are.
Copyright infringement is *not* theft. I agree there. However copyright infringement can deprive the copyright owner of money.
And at this point you've gone into serious crime. Properly copyrighted material is protected under US law and the copyright owner is entitled not only to the value lost, but also damages. That is, if you ever get caught. And for this purpose it doesn't matter if you sell it or give it away.
Yes. Strangely enough that may be a much lesser crime under US law unless the victim can prove that his manuscript is worth something. For example, stealing my manuscript is barely a crime; stealing a Steven King manuscript would get you into a world of hurt.
Copryright infringement is not classified as theft under US law.
Openly free copies, ilegal or otherwise, sometimes help sell books.
Of course I agree that copyright infringement is wrong. It's also a fact of life.
And another point: it's probably a bad idea to do that to a lawyer. :)
The problem with this is that the lawyer has spent time on one specific item (your will). He has billable hours. These are technically (by US law) different from intellectual property.
Morally I agree with you. However, under US law copyright infringment is *not* classified as theft.
By international treaty, the US recognizes copyright as property. Like it or not that's the law, we assume created by lawmakers the world over for the benefit of the people. If you take the wiki definition (just for one) of "theft," then the word squarely applies to misappropriation of a copyrighted work, in any form:
'Theft (also known as stealing) is, in general, the wrongful taking of someone else's property without that person's willful consent. In law, it is usually the broadest term for a crime against property. It is a general term that encompasses offences such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, trespassing, shoplifting, intrusion, fraud (theft by deception), and sometimes criminal conversion. Legally, theft is generally considered to be synonymous with larceny.'
WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) involves 183 member countries, and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Far away from Washington DC, the US Congress, Disney, the RIAA, or the MPAA. It doesn't really matter how you or I or anyone else defines the word "theft"; what matters is how 183 nations around the world define it, and how these terms are used within the laws these countries have agreed to follow.
OTOH several amendments to Title 17 have the word "THEFT" in their titles.
I know there is some debate over "theft" vs. "infringement," involving, IMO, a misunderstood US Supreme Court ruling that, in any case, is now moot because of the DMCA.
"Infringe" means nothing more than to encroach, and that is nothing out of context. As I pointed out in another message, the US is legally bound by international treaty, as implemented by the DMCA, to consider copyright as a form of property. Therefore it can be "stolen." Most people know the DMCA as the law that makes it illegal to circumvent encryption, but it also includes provisions that bound the US to a number of international copyright treaties.
I based my notes on seminars we had on copyright when I worked for Penn State. Things may have changed since then. I will look up the various definitions.
And yes, I still think that copyright infringement is wrong, besides being illegal.
However, the legal release of on-line materials may enhance the sales of printed material.
Actually, there are four tests for fair use, that is only one of them, they are:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Not all of these tests have to be satisfied as far as I know.
I'm pretty sure no one who uses a computer deeply believes this. They may think they believe it, but unless you are a rarity you have programs you have copied.
I know this isn't copyright, but did you send unisys money to use the GIF decoder? Are you going to send Forgent Networks money to use your JPEG software?
That is fundamentally different, and you should know that. Merely using a house creates wear and diminishes the value.
However, if I stayed there, and you never, ever knew, and I left nothing broken or worn, would it really make a difference?
OK, I accept that.
I think there is a cultural "IP" brainwashing going on that people need to really sit back and think about. We *really* need to think about what "property" is.
Think carefully about libraries, the property is the paper on which the work is published. The library allows anyone to borrow the book. Surely that is a violation of your "use without compensation" ideals.
Now, lets go back to the copy of the software. In the 1980s it was PERFECTLY legal to use a single copy of software as long as only a single copy of it was used at any particular time.
In my previous example, what if I added the criterion that I would only use that copy when the original copyright owner (or anyone else who had a copy) was using it. Would it be legal then? An example may be a backup program. One person buys, 7 people use, one on each day. Is that legal? It used to be!
Maybe *you* didn't, but everyone I knew in business and the universities did. Everyone had "Copy II PC."
Actually, people argue this all the time. You can't "sell" the software. "Selling" software implies a new license of some sort or transfer of ownership rights. You can not take someone's GPL code and sell it. You are allowed to charge for the service of copying and distribution. Also You don't have to give the source away if you make no modifications. You are only required to make your changes public.
The questi "It would be curious...if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, received instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
I think that the copyright business is an accident of technology. I have been thinking about this for close to a decade. We saw the first rumblings of this when cassette tapes made copying music easy. Then VCRs, then DAT tapes, now everything.
It is human nature to take copies of things. It has only been with technology that "copies" and copying has been a viable business. Now, technology has taken that away. The value of the work has been diminished by progress, the very progress, which at an earlier time, created the value in the first place.
I'm not saying I have the answer, I'm just pointing out the facts. Fortifying business models with laws is also very bad. I read about a case in Chicago where a publically displayed sculpture could not be photographed because it violated the artists "intellectual property."
The copyright and IP craze is a bad thing for the US and the arts.
Getting artists and writers paid, is, of course, important, but laws that feed powerful corporations and harm the rights of individuals is not the answer.
Already agreed.
Time was, we were all able to share our property. I could lend my lawn mower to fred next door. When I wasn't using it, Fred could. OK, say I have 5 other friends, we set a schedule, Monday through sunday, each gets to use the mower. Is that wrong?
Now, the software in question, suppose it is backup software, again, I share it with 6 friends, we each get a night on which we run a backup. Is it now wrong to share?
Now, think about music, I have a CD, I rip my CD to the hard disk. I have a computer connected to my stereo in my living room. (Its true) and I rip all my music with high quality. I have almost 5000 songs on my hard disk. I don't listen to my music every day. In fact, probably only once a month. What if I share my music with my friends. There is NO chance any two of use would be playing the same songs at the same time. Is that wrong?
It is a slippery slope, and a very bad one for society. It is being driven by powerful corporations and they are harming our rights daily.
I understand and I sympathize with the plight of the authors and artists, as I have also suffered loss of income, but the big picture is a VERY BIG picture and we should not lose sight of it.
The problem is not how to ENFORCE copyright with draconian laws, but how to get the creators compensated, these are two very different things.
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