If you use BitTorrent, the terrorists have won...

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by General Ludd
As the music, game, movie, and books industries show, it is possible to make enormous sales despite the constant "disturbance" of copy right infringments, which supposedly make these thigns harder to sell for some mysterious reason.

Ah, the eternal problem of free-riders. You know, it's not because a tram doesn't require that everyone pays to be running, that it's ok not to pay for your ticket.

Maybe you should read what you quoted.


Work done is the so-called "property" of the person who did it, in that they can claim to of done something.

Work should be considered "property" in that it relates to a mean of production. However in the context I'm using here, work is what gives you a right over a produced object. Looking at it more closely, it appears evident that both are very similar anyway.

[GePap]

OB:

The immorality of plagarism has little if anything to do with the feelings or any legal rights someone else might have for the work. Plagarising the Bible is just as wrong as from some living author.

The morality of it is essentially the same as that of cheating. When you copy someone elses answers, did you hurt THEM in any way? NO. The imorality comes from passing of someone elses accomplishment as your own. In essence, you LIE.

Lying is not theft.

I hope this simple moral arguement solves your difficulty in understanding the difference.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
So receiving payment for sale of such products is not part of "distribution"?

This is wrong in so many ways.

First, just because you make attempts at distributing something doesn't mean it will get out to the world. For example, just because you put a stack of CDs on a rack in a shop by no means you can sell any of them.

Second, when did "distribution" start to involve financial transactions?

Third, so where are the studies - ones not sponsored or producted by RIAA or MPAA - showing such downloads have a negative impact on sales of CDs? Sure, there are such studies, but they all refute "downloads are killing us" claims made by RIAA and MPAA.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
No, not at all. If something isn't property, what's wrong in claiming it's yours? Claiming the sky is mine is silly, but it sure isn't "wrong".

If something isn't property, how is it possible that you claim it? You're just shooting yourself in the foot here.

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
"Theft" requires a prior definition of property (which the aforementioned chain of causality allows). If you define property through the possibility of theft, you're commiting a logical circle.

There appears to be a commonly accepted definition of "property" in common law that doesn't require us to go through hops, but IANAL.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Ah, the eternal problem of free-riders. You know, it's not because a tram doesn't require that everyone pays to be running, that it's ok not to pay for your ticket.

Again, you are comparing traditional property with copyrights. If you use a tram and not pay, you cause a net loss to the operator (use of additional fuel/electricity, etc.) but this simply is not the case with copyrights. Furthermore, just because somebody downloads a song, for example, will mean said person is going to pay for it if downloads are not available.

Lastly, but most importantly, this "intellectual property" fluff business is all about money. If money is not involved, why all the huffing and puffing?

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Work should be considered "property" in that it relates to a mean of production. However in the context I'm using here, work is what gives you a right over a produced object. Looking at it more closely, it appears evident that both are very similar anyway.

The value of a book is not in the object itself. Paper isn't that expensive. Same thing applies to CDs, VCDs, DVDs,etc.

[Urban Ranger]

Vel,

Thanks for your input

That's pretty much the uniform opinion I have seen from artists and writers, down to the bit wrt the middleman.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Again, you are comparing traditional property with copyrights. If you use a tram and not pay, you cause a net loss to the operator (use of additional fuel/electricity, etc.) but this simply is not the case with copyrights. Furthermore, just because somebody downloads a song, for example, will mean said person is going to pay for it if downloads are not available.

Lastly, but most importantly, this "intellectual property" fluff business is all about money. If money is not involved, why all the huffing and puffing?



The value of a book is not in the object itself. Paper isn't that expensive. Same thing applies to CDs, VCDs, DVDs,etc.

You think that the weight of the free riding passangers on public transport could possibly be a significant percentage of the weight of the vehicle and the paying passangers? As with copyrights the cost is that people who see others getting for free what they pay for are more likely to stop paying.

[Velociryx]

UR:

-=Vel=-

[Wraith]

--"It invalidates his grammar statement"

It was actually a rhetorical point used for effect. Since, technically, work is both a noun and a verb (at the least) in modern English usage. Like many other words, since words are verbed and nouned and so forth quite regularly.

Got the point across, at least. I hope.

(Edit: Since I had expected this response, I have to add this quote:

If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

)

--"General question: if IP is bollocks, how is plagiarism wrong?"

Fraud, since you're claiming it as your own.

--"as if distribution wasn't about the expectation of being paid for the work you did that other people will benefit from."

You read that copyright history I linked to? Despite the whole "it should benefit the author" line, it's always been the publisher that was the primary (indeed, intially the only) beneficiary of copyright.
When the stated purpose of something is exactly what isn't accopmlished by it, perhaps it's time to reconsider? I know some people have no use for empirical evidence, but...

In any case, new distribution channels actually allow an author/artist a better chance to make money on their works, since it allows them to present to a much larger audience than ever before.
Copyright is all about controlling the channels of distribution, and now that there's a low-cost, pervasive one that the publishers don't control, they're scrambling like mad to protect their oligopoly.

--"No, not at all. If something isn't property, what's wrong in claiming it's yours?"

Well, if you can't understand the problem with fraud, far be it from me to spend much effort trying to explain it to you.

--"why can't any course of events that leads to you being granted ownership over something, entails the impossibility of the item in question being non-physical?"

Well, you say you own a thought? Fine. Show it to me. Prove that you have it, and that no one else does.

Pretty tricky, isn't it?

--"Laws are made of semantic concepts and are applied by human beings who have to consider both the spirit and the letter of the law, and pit them with the circumstances of the situation they're evaluating."

What does any of this have to do with your argument?

I really can't figure out where you were trying to go with this, but to take a wild stab at it...
Laws are concepts, fine. They don't, however, necessarily exist anywhere outside the lawbooks. Take an example: by legal fiction, corporations are individuals. It's been codified in law for quite some time now. Does that make it real? Only in court. So where do copyright and patents come from? Where are they applicable?
BTW, it's always fun to take these legal (and any other) fictions and apply a reductio ad absurdum to them. Consider corporations, and how many of them, if truly treated as individuals, would have to be committed as clearly insane, and a danger to themselves and others. With copyright -- especially with the current example of essentially unlimited extensions and automatic registration -- consider that in one hundred years you won't be able to speak or write a full sentence without having to pay someone royalties. Or with the current patents -- which cover business processes and software, and don't seem to actually require the original "sufficient to reproduce" information any longer, including a fair number of perpetual motion machines -- wherein companies of nothing but lawyers make millions doing nothing but filing lawsuits (think this does much to promote innovation?) already. That one's just so much fun I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

So, I did actually have a point probably worthy of clarification. Legal fictions don't always translate into real terms, nor do they always do what they're ostensibly supposed to do. Maybe we should get rid of them after they've proven to be counterproductive.

--"Speaking from the perspective of an artist whose livlihood is impacted by these various regulations, I have this to say:"

Thank you ^_^ Amazing how the people involved actually have opinions that get ignored by the ones supposedly trying to benefit them.

Wraith
'I had this sudden feeling,' [Rincewind] went on, 'that there won't be many water buffalo string holders on the People's Committee. In fact . . . a lot of the People's Committee, correct me if I'm wrong, are standing right here?'
'Initially, of course,' said Butterfly. 'The peasants can't even read and write.'
-- Interesting Times ("Terry Pratchett")