Pirate Bay case exposes corporate greed
Keith Parkins | 18.04.2009 18:35 | Culture | Globalisation | Technology
The Pirate Bay case has proved to be a massive own goal for the entertainments industry, serving to expose to the world their naked greed. Have they never heard of the McLibel trial?
Four guys get a year in prison, hit with a multi-million dollar fine.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427760.html?c=on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2009/04/13/from-pirate-coelho-central/
I get a strong sense of David and Goliath here, or maybe a better analogy would be the playground bully.
The entertainments industry has shot itself in the foot, a massive own goal. All they have done is exposed their naked greed for all the world to see..
I trawled through the postings on the BBC news site. After a while it became boringly repetitive, the entertainments industry with only a handful of exceptions, was slammed. They do not have public support.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/04/pirate_bay_beached_but_not_sun.html
Too often I am forced to watch a video clip on a DVD that compares file swapping, illicit disc copy with theft. No it is not theft. Theft is to take something which deprives the owner of its use. For example, if my laptop is stolen, I am deprived of its use, I cannot write or post these comments. On the other hand, if I use my laptop to copy a disc that I have bought and pass it to a friend who has never heard of the artist, who has lost out? Not me, as I still have my original disc; not the artist, who was unheard of, but now one more person is aware of their work.
Not a hypothetical example. I did just that with an album by Mechanical Bride. I passed a copy to a friend, who I thought would like the music. I was correct, my friend then asked could I buy for him the original album, which I did.
http://www.heureka.clara.net/music/mechanical-bride.htm
The entertainments industry likes to bandy around figures. For every CD sold, one is copied; for every DVD sold, twenty are copied. These figures are plucked out of thin air, and they make the false assumption that every copy translates as missed sales.
Let us assume for every five originals there are five copies. No way does this mean there are five lost sales.
The entertainments industry has only itself to blame. If you peddle overpriced crap, you expect to get into difficulty.
The peak of the music industry was in the 1960s, nearly half a century ago. Then you had good music, it is now seen as some mythical heyday. Now, with one or two exceptions, we have dross, banal pop music. This is seen in the low sales figures required to hit the number one spot compared with the 1960s.
In the 1960s there was a large number of independent record labels, where the producers had a love of music. How many new groups, as the Beatles had, have a producer like George Martin working with them? Bands would work the clubs, have some talent, their music passed by word of mouth, and by copying their albums.
The business is now dominated by a handful of conglomerates. To them it is a product. The next big hit, then onto the next big hit. Every hit, followed by clones.
The same in publishing. Gone the small publishers who cared about their writers, who cared about literature. If the names have survived at all, it is as an imprint of a large conglomerate. Like the music industry it is about the next blockbuster backed by a massive advertising campaign.
The classical music scene has all but disappeared.
The exception has been Naxos. Naxos found unknown artists, who nevertheless were good, linked them with state-of-the-art recording equipment and turned out a CD at four pounds sterling. Cheap at the time, cheaper than what the major labels were churning out to milk some money out of their badly recorded back catalogue.
At first, people bought the Naxos label, thinking, I do not know that symphony, or composer but I'll give it a try. They were pleasantly surprised.
Naxos then went one step further, they would over a period of time, record all of a composer's repertoire, something the major labels were not doing.
As a result, Naxos now dominates the market.
The entertainments industry bleats about the artists losing revenue, never about Big Business losing revenue, when it is Big Business that gets the lions share of the income not the artist.
The Court in Sweden has awarded the record labels, who claim to have lost out, a massive award in compensation. The founders of Pirate Bay have said can't pay, won't pay, but even if they could pay did pay, how much of that award would the record companies divvy out to their artists? We all know the answer, not a penny.
I 'file share books', I pass them on for others to read, I even leave them in public places for strangers to pick up. Will I be prosecuted, thrown in gaol for this heinous crime, will BookCrossing be raided by the police at the instigation of the Book Publishers Association for facilitating this heinous crime of 'file sharing books', will the founders of BookCrossing be put on trial in a political show trial, found guilty and incarcerated for a year?
http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/bookcrossing.htm
The action against the founders of Pirate Bay has not even succeeded in shutting down Pirate Bay, the servers, like those of Indymedia UK, are hosted around the world.
We should never forget that the Spanish Armada was defeated by pirates like Sir Francis Drake, or privateers as they liked to be called.
The conclusion of the case in Sweden coincides with ever more Draconian legislation being passed in the UK, where the state spies on its citizens, far exceeding the worst excesses of Nineteen Eighty-Four or Stalinist Russia.
I thought we defeated totalitarianism when the old Soviet Union collapsed. We did not see the collapse to see it replaced by corporate totalitarianism.
We can though hit back. Communism collapsed when the people rebelled in peaceful revolution. Corporate totalitarianism will collapse too.
We should boycott the companies that tried to shut down the Pirate Bay.
Have they not heard of the McLibel trial?
We are seeing an industry in its final death throes lashing out. An industry that alienates its customers has no future.
web
http://thepiratebay.org/
http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com/
further reading
Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone, HarperCollins, 2009
http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/the-winner-stands-alone.htm
Paulo Coelho, From Pirate Coelho Central, Paulo Coelho's Blog, 13 April 2009
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2009/04/13/from-pirate-coelho-central/
Court jails Pirate Bay founders, BBC news on-line, 17 April 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm
Keith Parkins, Pirate Bay, Indymedia UK, 17 April 2009
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427760.html?c=on
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427760.html?c=on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2009/04/13/from-pirate-coelho-central/ I get a strong sense of David and Goliath here, or maybe a better analogy would be the playground bully.
The entertainments industry has shot itself in the foot, a massive own goal. All they have done is exposed their naked greed for all the world to see..
I trawled through the postings on the BBC news site. After a while it became boringly repetitive, the entertainments industry with only a handful of exceptions, was slammed. They do not have public support.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/04/pirate_bay_beached_but_not_sun.html Too often I am forced to watch a video clip on a DVD that compares file swapping, illicit disc copy with theft. No it is not theft. Theft is to take something which deprives the owner of its use. For example, if my laptop is stolen, I am deprived of its use, I cannot write or post these comments. On the other hand, if I use my laptop to copy a disc that I have bought and pass it to a friend who has never heard of the artist, who has lost out? Not me, as I still have my original disc; not the artist, who was unheard of, but now one more person is aware of their work.
Not a hypothetical example. I did just that with an album by Mechanical Bride. I passed a copy to a friend, who I thought would like the music. I was correct, my friend then asked could I buy for him the original album, which I did.
http://www.heureka.clara.net/music/mechanical-bride.htm The entertainments industry likes to bandy around figures. For every CD sold, one is copied; for every DVD sold, twenty are copied. These figures are plucked out of thin air, and they make the false assumption that every copy translates as missed sales.
Let us assume for every five originals there are five copies. No way does this mean there are five lost sales.
The entertainments industry has only itself to blame. If you peddle overpriced crap, you expect to get into difficulty.
The peak of the music industry was in the 1960s, nearly half a century ago. Then you had good music, it is now seen as some mythical heyday. Now, with one or two exceptions, we have dross, banal pop music. This is seen in the low sales figures required to hit the number one spot compared with the 1960s.
In the 1960s there was a large number of independent record labels, where the producers had a love of music. How many new groups, as the Beatles had, have a producer like George Martin working with them? Bands would work the clubs, have some talent, their music passed by word of mouth, and by copying their albums.
The business is now dominated by a handful of conglomerates. To them it is a product. The next big hit, then onto the next big hit. Every hit, followed by clones.
The same in publishing. Gone the small publishers who cared about their writers, who cared about literature. If the names have survived at all, it is as an imprint of a large conglomerate. Like the music industry it is about the next blockbuster backed by a massive advertising campaign.
The classical music scene has all but disappeared.
The exception has been Naxos. Naxos found unknown artists, who nevertheless were good, linked them with state-of-the-art recording equipment and turned out a CD at four pounds sterling. Cheap at the time, cheaper than what the major labels were churning out to milk some money out of their badly recorded back catalogue.
At first, people bought the Naxos label, thinking, I do not know that symphony, or composer but I'll give it a try. They were pleasantly surprised.
Naxos then went one step further, they would over a period of time, record all of a composer's repertoire, something the major labels were not doing.
As a result, Naxos now dominates the market.
The entertainments industry bleats about the artists losing revenue, never about Big Business losing revenue, when it is Big Business that gets the lions share of the income not the artist.
The Court in Sweden has awarded the record labels, who claim to have lost out, a massive award in compensation. The founders of Pirate Bay have said can't pay, won't pay, but even if they could pay did pay, how much of that award would the record companies divvy out to their artists? We all know the answer, not a penny.
I 'file share books', I pass them on for others to read, I even leave them in public places for strangers to pick up. Will I be prosecuted, thrown in gaol for this heinous crime, will BookCrossing be raided by the police at the instigation of the Book Publishers Association for facilitating this heinous crime of 'file sharing books', will the founders of BookCrossing be put on trial in a political show trial, found guilty and incarcerated for a year?
http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/bookcrossing.htm The action against the founders of Pirate Bay has not even succeeded in shutting down Pirate Bay, the servers, like those of Indymedia UK, are hosted around the world.
We should never forget that the Spanish Armada was defeated by pirates like Sir Francis Drake, or privateers as they liked to be called.
The conclusion of the case in Sweden coincides with ever more Draconian legislation being passed in the UK, where the state spies on its citizens, far exceeding the worst excesses of Nineteen Eighty-Four or Stalinist Russia.
I thought we defeated totalitarianism when the old Soviet Union collapsed. We did not see the collapse to see it replaced by corporate totalitarianism.
We can though hit back. Communism collapsed when the people rebelled in peaceful revolution. Corporate totalitarianism will collapse too.
We should boycott the companies that tried to shut down the Pirate Bay.
Have they not heard of the McLibel trial?
We are seeing an industry in its final death throes lashing out. An industry that alienates its customers has no future.
web
http://thepiratebay.org/ http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com/ further reading
Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone, HarperCollins, 2009
http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/the-winner-stands-alone.htm Paulo Coelho, From Pirate Coelho Central, Paulo Coelho's Blog, 13 April 2009
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2009/04/13/from-pirate-coelho-central/ Court jails Pirate Bay founders, BBC news on-line, 17 April 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm Keith Parkins, Pirate Bay, Indymedia UK, 17 April 2009
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427760.html?c=on
Keith Parkins
Homepage:
http://thepiratebay.org/
Comments
Hide the following 23 comments
You try to justify ...
18.04.2009 19:10
The analogy of the stolen laptop is false. A laptop is a tangible object. Art, in the form of music or writing, is not. So how is the writer or musician to make money? [Perhaps you'd like him to starve in a garret ...]
The answer is by royalties. Flawed though the system is - and you can produce any number of flaws - it is still the only workable system at present.
You mention Naxos. Yes, they do well because they sign on unknowns for peanuts. What better example of sweated labour? Someone such as yourself should be arguing that these musicians should be getting paid a decent wage - but instead they're prepared to accept next to nothing because it's a chance to be heard. And you have the nerve to support such a system? Shame on you!
Your argument is similar to those used by shoplifters - 'it's the big stores that suffer, and they can afford it'. Well, no - they just charge the rest of us more. Then we wonder why things are more expensive ....
artist
pirate bay backer ?
18.04.2009 19:30
antifa
Pirate Bay was financially backed by a far right businessman
18.04.2009 20:30
~according to Expo, Lundström has later donated money to the National Democrats and other "far right parties" and also ordered "national socialist and revisionist material from white power companies".~
But if you don't click on the adverts on the website or filter them out, he doesn't get any money from it.
In response to "artist": If I am a carpenter and make a chair, I don't expect to get paid every time someone sits in it. So why should arty-farty "artists" be above everyone else? If they can get paid for making their art in the first place, good luck to them. But don't expect to have the state intervene on your behalf and stop us from making copies of it.
My opinion is pirate all you want. If the big media companies collapse and no-one can afford to make Hollywood blockbusters in the future, all the better. The genie is out of the bottle now, filesharing is just going to get faster and safer and nothing can be done to stop that, so people will have to learn to live with it.
anon
Justified
18.04.2009 21:08
I thought long and hard about this when I first heard of the court decision. I can to the same conclusion as you, but many hours before. My thought, like your art, is an intangible thing so I can only make a living by making sure that nobody copies my thought. Please could you forward me the £200 license fee that I charge for people using my thoughts. Much appreciated.
thinker
no need to justify
19.04.2009 00:45
Piracy actually improves the quality of the artists we listen to.
tas
@artist
19.04.2009 07:13
The answer is by royalties. Flawed though the system is - and you can produce any number of flaws - it is still the only workable system at present."
Aside from the rather odd use of "him" (are there no female writers or musicians?)...
What exactly would be wrong with treating the creator of an artistic work the same way you treat the creator of anything else - by paying them for what they create, not for every time it is used?
And, for that matter, would it really be the end of the world if artists had to work a "normal" job on the side - the same as most artists (excluding the handful favoured by the ruling class) throughout history?
anonymous
In response
19.04.2009 08:09
'Piracy actually improves the quality of the artists we listen to.' Interesting comment, lacking any sort of evidence.
So the quality of the Berlin Philharmonic would be improved if everyone just ripped off their CDs?
'... by paying them for what they create, not for every time it is used'. Which is what you do when you buy a book, magazine or CD.
'...artists had to work a "normal" job on the side ...' Hm. How many writers can afford NOT to have job on the side?
And the class analysis is a little flawed too - '... excluding the handful favoured by the ruling class ...' - like the Rolling Stones or the Beatles were so fasvoured by the "ruling class" when they started out.
artist
I want
19.04.2009 09:55
Free commercial muzak
Free commercial blockbusters
LOL
theft
19.04.2009 10:41
I work as a software developer for children's education. My entire livelihood is made from the royalties I earn from the products I make. My customers are happy to pay for the products that they buy, if they weren't - they wouldn't buy them. I constantly get repeat custom and emails saying how much their children enjoyed my work. If people copied my work as a cheap alternative to buying it without my permission then whats the point? I might as well stop doing it.
About 9mths ago, I put some custom built copy protection licensing on two on my products - guess what? the sales went up. Less people having the wherewithal to steal out of my wallet. Some of the other products I've just raised the price slightly, why should I pay for people thieving off me? I just dillute it across my customers.
Pirate bay and associated groups are just another form of parasite/leech feeding off other people's livelihoods because they don't have any talent of their own. I don't even understand how they actual think they are going to appeal it.
max
Pirate 2 Pirate
19.04.2009 12:06
Max, you claim to be a software developer. That means you were previously aware that you were selling your educational software unprotected from copying. You claim your sales have increased now that you introduce copyright protection, as if that vindicates your opinion on filesharing. That is either just shrewd marketing on your part, or an unintended blind luck. By giving away some some of your previous software you have increased your market presence and created a demand for your product that wasn't there previously. If you are clever then you will continue to make a cut-down version of your product installable without protection; conversely by removing that marketing tool you will choke your own career.
If I am working somewhere and I need to use the software that the company uses, then I will copy it and use it without paying copyright. If I am buying software for a company then I will make sure all the licenses are fully paid for. Crucially though, if I have a choice or influence over the purchase of two similar applications then I will choose the one that I am more familiar with, the one that I can download and play with at home.
The last CD I bought is freely available for download. I already had all the songs on my PC, and the only time I've played the CD is to record it onto my PC. I still attended the gig and bought it, and the next time the artist plays I'll be buying more of their CDs.
Anything is better than current copyright law.
It is good to know people like Max exist. I'm sure Max would never have any compilation tapes or CDs from friends. I'm sure everytime Max has joined in a verse of 'Happy Birthday' he has immediately raised the required perfomance fee and fowarded it to the copyright holder, AOL Time Warner. I hope Max doesn't have any Jpgs or MP3 files on his PC. I hope Max pays the Indymedia admins here when he reads an article here, more when he posts here. I hope he pays the developers who built the platforms or the coders who wrote the components. Otherwise Max is not only a parasite/leech in his own terms, he is an ignorant, hypocritical parasite.
Danny
ah, Danny, holier than thou ...
19.04.2009 13:20
I'm sure we've all downloaded copyrighted stuff at one time or another, and it's all part of the same syndrome. Yeah, sometimes it might make you go out and buy whatever, because it's so good. More often, you might say, well, that's not worth the money.
And P2P networking is here, and the genie won't go back in the bottle. Just don't complain when in years to come you find that publishers go out of business, or record companies stop producing CDs for you to rip.
The saddest thing is that artists will still go on writing, making music, whatever, because they are impelled to do so by their talents. It just means that now they'll be stuffed even more than they were being. You may say that anything is better than the present copyright system: okay, tell us about a system that will reward artists better in the days of P2P.
artist
Confessions of a crap artist
19.04.2009 15:46
Let's run with that analogy. Most drivers have broken a speed limit. I'd guess at least 50% would admit to have broken a speed limit this year. Half the traffic of P2P sites such as TPB is estimated by their prosecutors as being illegal. That means at least half is perfectly legal. And yet the police-state response is to close down the whole highway ? Why don't they just ban all road travel tommorow to ensure no more road-crime? This is like imprisoning the road's architect and road-builders and hold them responsible for all the subsequent crimes commited on that road. As ridiculous as the fact I can't legally post the 'Happy Birthday' lyrics here unless I can afford to pay for the privilege, despite the song being designed as a teaching aid.
"The saddest thing is that artists will still go on writing, making music, whatever, because they are impelled to do so by their talents."
Up until now, I agree with everything you've written, but I don't see that as sad. You got to suffer to be creative, which is why popular culture is ephemeral - too much reward, too little pain. Your best muse is the one who breaks your heart.
"It just means that now they'll be stuffed even more than they were being. You may say that anything is better than the present copyright system: okay, tell us about a system that will reward artists better in the days of P2P."
Maybe we shouldn't be rewarding artists at all. The old cliche of an artist starving in a garret, there is merit in that. You are right, the genuine artists work without expectation of reward beyond the incomparable reward of their own work. Not just standard 'artists' either, someone recently won a million dollar prize for solving a mathematical problem and he didn't turn up to collect it. The prize for him was solving the problem. He knows he doesn't need much money and someone of his talent will never be allowed to starve.
Still, even if you disagree with that then there are ways to reward the artist without paying the middle-men / business-men that are the real parasites. For instance, I downloaded a Dick Gaughan album. I don't have a credit card or money but I do realise I owe the guy something, so next time he is playing somewhere local I will turn up and pass him £10. I bet few record companies pay an artist £10 everytime I buy a CD. Genuis doesn't need copyright law to protect itself. Copyright is a sort of mafia 'insurance' for the second-rate, the shoddy, the fakers offered by capitalista dons.
Danny
drivel ...
19.04.2009 16:14
No, Danny, you don't ban the road; you ban the driver - in other words, Pirate Bay. Pursuing analogies too far is never a good idea, but the Pirate Bay has been caught speeding, and has thus lost his licence. Note: not all P2P networks have been banned.
'Maybe we shouldn't be rewarding artists at all. The old cliche of an artist starving in a garret, there is merit in that. You are right, the genuine artists work without expectation of reward beyond the incomparable reward of their own work.'
Yes, they will. But if you are anything of a socialist, don't you think they are worthy of their hire? Do you always take other people's labour for nothing? Do you expect your plumber to be grateful for the opportunity to clear out your bogs for nothing?
'... but I do realise I owe the guy something, so next time he is playing somewhere local I will turn up and pass him £10.' Oh, Danny, that's awfully sweet of you. I'm sure he'll be most grateful. Tell me, when you throw a sixpence into a beggar's cup, do you tip your hat as he murmurs, 'Bless you, guv'?
artist
Ten years of Indymedia (celebrated in appropriate style)
19.04.2009 16:27
Happy lawsuit to you
You look like a monkey
And you smell like one too
“I Made Major Mistakes”–Ex-Seattle Police Chief Admits Response to 1999 WTO Protests Was Too Heavy-Handed
Plus he recommends the legalisation of all drugs! What did IM do to him?
Danny
common sense
19.04.2009 18:25
Hypocrisy? Your showing a major lack of "common sense" and no sense of scale.
Sure - copy a few CDs etc. All what people are asking is not to take the pi**. Its one thing to copy a bit of music and some pics. Its another thing to be an individual who sets up a dodgy company that ranks #107 largest traffic site, that aims to promote copyright infringement on huge global scale with widespread implications for people's livelihoods, whilst raking in large PPC revenue for your own bank account, with some hogwash defence that you are "doing it for good of mankind". I'm sure the big amounts of cash have nothing to do with it. I'm sure they say they arn't making much money either. I'm sure they say a lot of things.
I'm sure the dodgy DVD sellers who makes £10K+ a month copying DVD and selling them at the market and in pubs say they are doing the public a service and they are robin hood saints. "Meanwhile, I'll just buy a big fat Mercedes thank you very much "
And you may argue that the 'starving artist' is a good thing for the art world etc. Why not have a 'starving binman' and a 'starving shelf stacker' as well? Why should artists be starving? Why can't they be absolutely loaded?
However, thats irrelevent. The point is the person who makes the work can choose what they blooming well want to do/not do with it, and how much they sell it for. Its for no one else to decide because they own it.
Why? because we live in a free society. You are trying to dictate what people should get paid, what property should be taken off them and that they should live on a shoe string. This makes you a wannabe fascist dictator.
max
max headroom
19.04.2009 20:02
Because most corporate artists are pish to start with, and the ones that were talented soon become pish when fed from that poisoned trough.
If you mean poor, then all the bin-men are poor. Perhaps there is one secret millionaire masquerading as a bin-man because they love the work and find it rewarding, but really. I've emptied bins and I've painted pictures. The painting was painful and difficult, the buckets are merely unpleasant. Normally painters ascribe their painting to being motivated by love but more realistically the idea of a painting to a painter is like an abrasive bit of sand to an oyster. Happy oysters don't have pearls.
Metallica. The worst band that ever was or ever will be, bar none. And not just because of their music.
Danny
money money money
19.04.2009 21:23
Happy oysters also enjoy having plenty of food tokens coming in.
My landlord generally gives me the incentive to do what I do once a month. Money is a good motivator:
- Artists work harder because of it.
- Consumers copy stuff to avoid paying it.
- Pirate Bay do their thing to be loaded enough that a court can be asking for £2.5M.
Speaking of money.........................
I see pirate bay have an "Important blog entry". It is heartening to see they are turning the recent publicity into another revenue stream. One of the action points is to: "* Buy a t-shirt and show the world where your sympathy is."
T-shirts for 25euros, hoodies for 50euros. So on top of the PPC revenue, they are also getting £22 for a print t-shirt. Wow, actually you can get all sorts of pirate bay merchantise: shower curtains, rubber ducks, satchels. They've really got this one thought out.
I wonder if they are doing a book-deal yet?
Hmmmmm. I guess the courts figure they have got the £2.5million stashed away to be able to pay the damages from. I'd also guess that they'd say anything and everything to keep hold of that cash, since £2.5million is a lot of money which they probably don't want to lose.
max
Rent not trade
20.04.2009 12:55
File sharing is an example of gift economy. Gift economy works better than market economy. If everything was run as gift economy then artists wouldn't need to be paid. The more sane of the statists have realised that filesharing isn't going away and gone for schemes like paying a small amount per download to artists. Remember that musicians are only getting a few pence for each sale anyway, none at all in many cases; and the main revenues for music come from live performances.
The definition of theft in the article is correct. Theft is taking something (tangible or intangible) that deprives someone else of its use. Denying someone else their supposedly legitimate due is not "theft" and calling it such is muddying the waters - this would mean that dodgy benefit and tax claims, squatting, etc are all forms of "theft". I notice the state has also started referring to benefit "thieves". It completely ruins the moral force of the idea of theft to use it in this way. The thing is - extraction of value from "intellectual property" is not trade in the full sense (where something inherently limited is being sold), it is rent extraction - similar to taxation or extortion, but by states. The item itself is inherently infinitely reproducible unless artificially limited. So capitalism is impelling the creation of scarcity in a situation of abundance. Charging for programs, music etc is a bit like stopping people from drinking rainwater to force them to buy from the water company (which actually happened in Cochabamba), or enclosing land to force people to work in factories.
n00bpwner
Breach of ABBA's copyright surely
20.04.2009 14:18
Note: All P2P networks are being prosecuted, this is just the latest big name.
Pirate Bay isn't an individual who is choosing to break the speed limit /copyright law or not. Pirate Bay et al don't break copyright. They do make it easier for people to break the copyright-law speed limit, in the same way a road builder makes it easier for people to break the speed-limit /law.
I mean, what the fuck is copyright? Why can't I just copyright the copyright process and ban it? This idea, this riff, these words, they belong to me and my descendants just because a lawyer says so? But where did I get them from? Someone mentioned the Beatles and the Stones copyright legacy. Name on early Beatles or Stones song that wasn't a direct rip-off of earlier Blues singers work. Just one. So why do they 'own' what they admit that they stole?
All creativity is theft. Everyone who is smart learns from has went before and passes it on to those who come after. Everyone who is stupid and talentless tries to hoard what is common intellectual property and claim it as their own.
Danny
copyright
20.04.2009 18:56
Immediately followed by shock and indignation when then are fined or banged up in prison.
We all wont stuff for free, and we'll do and say anything to get it.
Taking stuff without permission is pretty much the moral definition of Theft no matter how much your try to split hairs like somekind of overpaid lawyer with legal definitions. Telling people what they can/can do with their own work sounds like a fascist ordering people around.
>> I mean, what the fuck is copyright? Why can't I just copyright the copyright process and ban it?
What are you talking about!?!? I can't believe you have strong opinions about copyright when you don't even know what it is. I guess anything that stops you getting stuff for free is bad though.
>> All creativity is theft...
Well, theres a sweeping statement if i ever heard one. Perhaps you should consult n00bpwner on the legal definition of theft. I'm sure they will disagree. I think you are talking about influences which artists pretty much have no problem with on the whole.
max
reply to Max
20.04.2009 23:53
Sounds like some funny logic there. No one is telling anyone what they can or can't do with their own work. If they want to keep it locked up in their cupboard, fine. If they want to make it public, fine.
It is the other way round - *you* telling *us* what we can and can't do - i.e. make a copy of some information.
The natural state of affairs is that anyone can copy any information they like. It is only government intervention that makes this a crime by introducing the idea of giving someone an exclusive right to copy their information and forbid others from doing it. And many people feel that crime is anachronistic in this day and age of instant copies of information which is essentially zero cost.
It is the copyright system that requires an authoritarian state ("fascists ordering people around") to enforce it.
And you must see the glaring difference between copying and theft? Theft deprives the original owner of what they had, and copying doesn't. This is obvious, and not a minor quibble or hair-splitting.
anon
anon
21.04.2009 13:36
Information in the form of a photograph, music, a software product takes many man-hours to create. I'm a software developer for the education market. One of the biggest products I've made took 18mths of solid work to create. I can't afford to just give it away for nothing or put my entire livelihood on anonymous people's honesty. (and if you wanna read about real cases proving that anonymous honesty is a complete disaster - try reading Freakonomics)
If we had no copyright law, then i can guarantee someone will burn 100 CDs of that product and sell them for £5 on Ebay - making £500 for themself and not giving me a penny. People do it already, even though it against the law. (Remember, the majority of people arn't computer savvy for do it themselves. I know plenty of people who don't even know how to put music on their MP3 players). The exact same thing would happen with DVDs of films that cost millions to make, music etc etc.
With no copyright laws, you could walk into any shop and buy a DVD / CD / Software for a £1. All the proceeds would end up in the shop-owners pocket. None would go back to the artist/developer.
A live example is to take a walk around Bangkok and you'll see what i mean. The result is some streets are just full of people selling copied CDs and all the proceeds go into the sellers pocket. The original makers get 0%. This is a result of no copyright enforcement.
------> And you must see the glaring difference between copying and theft? Theft deprives the original owner of what they had, and copying doesn't. This is obvious, and not a minor quibble or hair-splitting.
Yes, i understand your point. But i do think its a quibble over a word's definition. Its so close to theft its like listening to eskimos argue about the correct word for snow. Its not theft like taking a lawnmower out of the garden shed, but it is depriving people of what they would have had if the copying wasn't done.
If people can get something for free without paying for it, then a large percentage of them will do that (human nature). Afterall, why go to a shop and pay £50 when i can download for nothing or buy off ebay for £5?
That is depriving the original maker of revenue. Without looking at individual cases of making a copy for a mate who wouldn't have bought it anyway etc. etc. The overall probability is that a reasonable percentage of people who were going to buy it, didn't because they got a copy instead.
The maker gets less money. The consumer gets something for nothing.
Regardless of legal terminology - it just doesn't sound 'morally' correct.
Which I guess is why there are copyright laws to begin with - because the theft laws didn't cover it.
max
second reply to Max
21.04.2009 21:44
I appreciate you put a lot of effort into what you do and want to be compensated for that. But I don't think your desire for that is more important than the fundamental right to freely copy information. So unfortunately you will have to think of some other way to make a living - maybe work on in-house software like I do.
I don't see copyright infringement as "so close to theft" - I see it as massively different.
You could equally say that copyrighting something is theft - it deprives people of something they could freely have if copyright didn't exist or if you didn't copyright it. That is equally as ludicrous as your suggestion that copying something is like theft.
Copyright is based on a fictional entity called "intellectual property". I don't think intellectual ideas can be "owned", I think they should be freely distributable.
And apart from all this, the argument is pretty academic, since filesharing is ubiquitous now and it will only get faster, easier, and less risky. Just face it, copyright is dead.
anon