Ethics and Piracy

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
No you don't. Suppose I place a large pile of bricks in front of your door. By clearing the bricks, you agree to owe me a billion dollars. You see how ridiculous your assertion is, no?

I honestly tried my best to explain how the law functioned (in the US anyway) and why, but apparently I failed.

One more time (with feeling)

The difference between a cd and a ton of bricks is.....

the information on the cd is covered by a license which prohibits its reproduction. It doesn't matter how you procure the cd, it just matters what you do with it. The act of using a cd is an act of accepting the license, read the inside cover of the liner notes, its there.

Disregarding most of the brick analogy, unlike the cd, I can't strip the bricks of its information and transmit to others. And theres no agreement that I would be prohibited to, even if there was.


What do I need to explain better? Maybe its a cultural thing, Americans have these boiler plate contracts on everything, and for the most part they are upheld, if you read them or not.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
you would be incorrect. well, the first phrase you are correct . On what other grounds do you think the RIAA is suing people?

Breaking copyright laws

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I was responding to Sava's remarks that Metallica was already adequately compensated. I was using you in the second person singular, not plural. Comprende? I thought that it was obvious I was referring to his particular impact on the free market by including the phrase "beyond your own economic investment"

Still my two points hold.

1. Sava is one of the people who are the market for Metallica music, and they collectively determine the price for the songs, if the market were free.

2. However, that market is not free. Anything that has a brand or label attached to it puts it out of a competitive market. That brand makes this thing distinguishable. If this brand cannot be copied, it will have the effect of giving this something a monopoly.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
No you don't. Do you sign a contract before you buy the CD, with all the terms detailed and agreed to by both parties?

I would bet that 90% of all contracts are never signed. Granted, they're mostly mundane, paying the neighbor kid 5 bucks to mow your lawn, or buying something with cash etc. Buy the lawnmower, it probably has a warranty on it. Buy a shirt, you can take it back if it has a hole in it. etc.

[Kuciwalker]

Only 90%?!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I would bet that 90% of all contracts are never signed. Granted, they're mostly mundane, paying the neighbor kid 5 bucks to mow your lawn, or buying something with cash etc. Buy the lawnmower, it probably has a warranty on it. Buy a shirt, you can take it back if it has a hole in it. etc.

Okay, verbal contracts are enforceable if both parties agree to the terms, that both parties agree to be bound by the contract, and that one side can verify that such a contract does exist. Most of the time this is not a problem.

A warranty can only become a contract once you signed and send it back, right?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Breaking copyright laws

but what is a copyright law anyway? While you can have cases involving copyright infringement without licensees, quite often they go hand in hand.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Still my two points hold.

1. Sava is one of the people who are the market for Metallica music, and they collectively determine the price for the songs, if the market were free.

hence my caveat

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
2. However, that market is not free. Anything that has a brand or label attached to it puts it out of a competitive market. That brand makes this thing distinguishable. If this brand cannot be copied, it will have the effect of giving this something a monopoly.

Would you just call it "music" or "rock music" or "we were once cool music" to avoid branding it? I frankly want to know what group I'm purchasing when I get a cd. If that injures the free market, well call me a commie

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Okay, verbal contracts are enforceable if both parties agree to the terms, that both parties agree to be bound by the contract, and that one side can verify that such a contract does exist. Most of the time this is not a problem.

A warranty can only become a contract once you signed and send it back, right?

True on the warranty, well warranty fine print dependent of course. However a cd is a license not a warranty. You don't have to do anything affirmative beyond using the cd to consent to be bound. At least in the US, you can be bound by an affirmative act, which can include non-verbal communication or acts.


Maybe I'm cynical, but I think warranties have to be sent in, in order to rip off the fools that are too lazy to do it and their crap breaks. I feel the same way about rebates.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I honestly tried my best to explain how the law functioned (in the US anyway) and why, but apparently I failed.

One more time (with feeling)

The difference between a cd and a ton of bricks is.....

the information on the cd is covered by a license which prohibits its reproduction. It doesn't matter how you procure the cd, it just matters what you do with it. The act of using a cd is an act of accepting the license, read the inside cover of the liner notes, its there.

There is no contract -- or at least such a contract is not enforceable, under US law. As I said, one side has no say to it and cannot be held responsible for not being obliged to it.

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Disregarding most of the brick analogy, unlike the cd, I can't strip the bricks of its information and transmit to others. And theres no agreement that I would be prohibited to, even if there was.

There is no difference. I merely illustrated why a coercive contract cannot be upheld in a court of law (at least in a US court of law). How the contract is arrived is irrelevant.

[asleepathewheel]

oh, I see why you mentioned warranty, because I brought it up. I was being too general, I meant the general store warranty, ie you have 90 days to return this merchandise. As opposed to manufacturer's warranty. Should have picked a better example, as it can go either way. My bad.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
but what is a copyright law anyway?

You want a link to the text?

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
While you can have cases involving copyright infringement without licensees, quite often they go hand in hand.

What licensees? The only "licenses" are EULAs of software.

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Would you just call it "music" or "rock music" or "we were once cool music" to avoid branding it? I frankly want to know what group I'm purchasing when I get a cd. If that injures the free market, well call me a commie

My point is you are not talking about a free market because this sector has never been a free market. The only exception is republished works in the public domain. Why do you think Ming makes so much $$$

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
oh, I see why you mentioned warranty, because I brought it up. I was being too general, I meant the general store warranty, ie you have 90 days to return this merchandise. As opposed to manufacturer's warranty. Should have picked a better example, as it can go either way. My bad.

Oh, that. I think that's just a promise made by a store (or a chain of stores) to give its customers confidence. Anything that's above and beyond the laws covering consumer protection is probably not enforceable in a court of law, but they do it anyways because it garners goodwill.

[Tingkai]

The next time I sell my car, I'm going to stick a contract underneath the hood that strictly prohibits the buyer from sharing the benefits of the car with other people (no passengers allowed), re-selling the car, lending the car, or giving the car away. The contract will state that by using the car, the buyer agrees to the contract, even if the buyer did not know the contents of the contract before purchasing the car.

Actually, I shouldn't sell my car and I shouldn't buy or borrow someone else's car because that's immoral and it's theft.

When I borrow a car or buy a used car, I'm stealing the work and creativity of the automakers. I am gaining benefits from something I didn't create.

Thousands of automaking jobs are lost because of this piracy. Everytime someone buys a used car, one less car is sold by the automaker. If you share your car with, say, your wife, that means your wife doesn't have to buy a car and that harms the automakers. The loss of sales revenue limits the automakers ability to create new models of cars and thousands of autoworkers lose their jobs.

Clearly, selling your car, giving someone a ride, or lending your car is theft and immoral.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
There is no contract -- or at least such a contract is not enforceable, under US law. As I said, one side has no say to it and cannot be held responsible for not being obliged to it.

I was under the impression that this happened all the time, please tell me where I'm wrong (and I would love to read up on it). This is an adhesion contract, but those are generally upheld so long as they are not unconsionable or unclear. And as you probably know, many types of adhesion contracts are upheld, such as forum selection clauses for cruise lines, etc.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Clearly, selling your car, giving someone a ride, or lending your car is theft and immoral.

Clearly.

[Whaleboy]

How? (to both statements)

The first requires a large dose of spam, the second simply state that morality and ethical systems just have different placements on a scale of emotivism.

If you buy the CD, you have to obey the contract that goes with it (or get sued); if the contract doesn't end up DOING anything, well, that sucks for the company that sold the CD to you.

Indeed. Their attempt to (illegitimately in my eyes) exert control over the free information on the disk fails.

If you know the contract is there and that it is part of the agreement that allows you to have the CD, then your excuse can't be "but I intentionally didn't read it!"

No, the key thing is that they may think it as such, but when I buy the CD, it is not presented as a condition of purchase. I purchase the CD without knowledge of the license existing as far as they are concerned because it is not offered as a condition of purchase. Furthermore, it is irrelevant to me, and you haven't shown why it should be. To do so, you must attack my distinction between proprietary material goods and the infinite resource of information.

Whaleboy, you suck. Seriously, I can back you up when you deny qualitative absolutes... but QUANTITATIVE ones...

That point there was irrelevant here. If you want to get into a debate about it, we'll have to cover the tired ground of the possibility of other internally consistent logical systems, and the not-so tired ground of cosmology. I think we can both concur that this is irrelevant to the issue of free information.

because Whaleboy thinks he can deny the existence of logics and morality

That is not crucial to my, or either argument. Logics? I have a morality that does not cover CD copying, yet I could think it all-pervasive and my argument would remain unaffected. I would ask you to revise your points there.

Oncle Boris: the problem is that whether or not information is "property" is irrelevent to this debate, as it's simply a matter of contractual obligation

That your the misunderstanding here. If you want to show Agathon, OB and myself to be wrong, you need to attack the distinction that information cannot be property. If you want to talk about why I should honour contracts, set up a virtue theory thread and we can talk about that, or the place of the contracts in the first instance.

A shocking admission here at apolyton.

I would consider this to be an illegitimate rent paid to a dying industry. Why subsidize an industry for which there is no need?

Agreed. Furthermore one is still paying for information which is a fallacy, others that do not seek it would be made to pay! That's worse than CD sales, since at least you get something resembling material compensation for your money.

Nevertheless, there are those people who want to make some into property to suit themselves. Their means of doing so threatens to morph into a totalitarian control over the distribution of information or at least a severe curtailing of the rights we currently enjoy.

Indeed, take that to its conclusion and it seems rather scary.

I could agree with you, if only you come up with an answer to this problem: who's gonna pay for the distribution?

Even if intellectual property was 0$, we would need to pay for the bandwidth, the book, the CD, etc.

I am happy to pay a fee for broadband service, for the cost of the plastic circle, or for the paper and ink in a book. I am not happy to pay for what comes through my broadband, for the music on the disk (the information), or the text in the book, because the information is an abstraction.

One can always argue that piracy depletes the financial resources of the owner(s) of said works and objects.

That's consequential at best. In other words, I download something, or receive a piece of random information that is my business, and that prevents me from buying a CD. Am I going to be forced into HMV and obliged at gunpoint to buy a CD? I think not. The situation there is analogous to car magazines recommending one car or slamming another. It is entirely consequential, or what I would call environmental for a business, who, so to speak, cannot nor should not control the weather.

AFAIK, copyrighted material is definitely not public domain. This kils your third point as well.

But the copyright is irrelevant. They do not reside in a personal domain like a house or a PC, nor are they directed private communications (me -> a specified individual or individual). If I publicise something, it is published me -> unknown individuals that want it. As a condition of that, as I have control over the convenience, I make them pay. That need not be the case. The fact that I release it like that makes it public domain. This leads to the conclusion that the publishing industry has been living on borrowed time since it started, waiting for a means of cheap replication that bypasses their ability to control the information by the production of its means of communication, or the illegitimate notion of copyrights.

So it's OK to steal money from rich people's bank accounts, but not poor people's?

There is no stealing going on. One is not advocating hacking into ones account, violating private property or siphoning off anothers finite resources to ones own ends.

Okay, verbal contracts are enforceable if both parties agree to the terms, that both parties agree to be bound by the contract, and that one side can verify that such a contract does exist. Most of the time this is not a problem.

Precisely. At the point of sale, I am not asked to agree to the contract. If I was, I would simply lie because the contract is a fallacy... but I take a utilitarian view that honourable people might not.