Hanging Out For Free Is Piracy

from the free-is-bad dept

Joe Betsill alerts us to an an amusing comic from theWAREHOUSE that seems fitting around here:

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Comments on “Hanging Out For Free Is Piracy”

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70 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Do You Need an Invoice?

You want to make money by mooching off of Mikes awesome articles and commentating on them. Sorry old chap but I’m afraid you’ll have to pay a licensing fee and give up all copyright claims for said comments to Mike for all eternity. If you don’t then I’m afraid you will have to be sued.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

Kaden, the cartoon is a cute way to both play down the idea of piracy, and to play up the “stupidity” of charging for “content”, by using something that is not content. It’s the typical sort of soft attempt to get a mental shift by those in the middle, by being misleading and mocking the other side’s position.

It sucks.

xenomancer (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:5 Re:

I may appear to be a little lighter than igneous rock pulling the bad joke that I did, but 20 adult elephants barely balances a spoonful of the nutronium residing in your head. Please either learn to chuckle rather than get personal or find a real, factual reason for being such an execrable malcontent.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Stupid is believing that something imaterial without form can be content.

I ask myself why musicians have to pay other musicians, if someone does a cover he is investing in that music, he is taking somebody else expressions and making his own, working with it and he has to pay the first one?

Why?

Can restaurants charge other restaurants for using their recipes? can Rolland charge musicians for making music with their content? every musician should pay the manufacturers of sound equipment shouldn’t they?

Musicians can’t possibly expect to use somebody else work to make a profit and don’t pay anything for what people have done before right?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

“I ask myself why musicians have to pay other musicians, if someone does a cover he is investing in that music, he is taking somebody else expressions and making his own, working with it and he has to pay the first one?”

The simple answer is that without the original work, the secondary work does not exist. It would be a remake of silence, which is what we get all the time for free.

The rest of your recipe and sound equipment rants only goes to show how hard you are working to obscure the obvious.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

Then nothing would be ever made since in your head everything needs to come from somewhere, but that is not what it happens is it?

Now, why should you get things for free without paying the people who enable you?

According to yourself without work done before there would never be future work is that not right?

So can there be musicians without instruments? Rolland, Yamaha should collect money from the use of their property no?

Why manufacturers of musical instruments that enable musicians everywhere to play for large crowds not paid by their work?is their property lesser in importance somehow to the creation of imaginary property?

Greevar (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4 Re:

Everything is built on what came before. That’s why nobody should have the right to claim “ownership” of any intangible art. Art comes from what people have done in the past and thus, it belongs all of humanity equally. Nobody should be restricted from copying, altering, remixing, etc. of old ideas into new expressions.

“All art is derivative. There is no form of art that is totally original… ‘originality’ is a modern art construct… a silly concession to marketing concerns.” – Paul deMarrais

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

The rest of your recipe and sound equipment rants only goes to show how hard you are working to obscure the obvious.

The same can be said about your little rant about how artists create something and need to be paid, everybody needs to be paid for their work, not extort others that do the work or the same work, I don’t see carpenters suing each other for doing the exact same things do you?

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

I don’t think it sucks, I think it is an accurate portrait of the parasitic nature of copyright.

The real thieves are artists that don’t do the work anymore and keep asking the people who do to pay them.

Why should any musician lose his job at a bar because the owner was threatened by a collection agency?

Why should anybody who works in front of a crowd for 8 or more hours a day have to pay anything to some dude he wouldn’t even be allowed to get close to it?

Copyright parasites don’t work they extort money from those who do and threaten their own fans.

ethorad (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

So can we video rock concerts without breaching copyright?

Afterall performances by their very nature are not fixed. They may be performing something which they have a fixed version of, but the live version will have differences – plus in videoing you are adding creative decisions about framing the shots etc.

John Fenderson (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

So can we video rock concerts without breaching copyright?

An interesting question. On the face of it, it seems the answer is “yes”.

However, every concert/play/movie ticket I’ve ever seen has terms attached to it that forbid recording. It may not be a copyright violation, but it would be breach of contract.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

I agree that it is an interesting question if “fixation” has not taken place prior to or during the concert (see Title 17, Section 101 and the “transmission” provision associated with “fixation”).

While this is a highly improbable situation, it is nevertheless a possibility that does make this an interesting question as you note.

btrussell (profile) says:

Re: derp

It says piracy is wrong.

You don’t think you should be able to come here and post for free do you? It costs money to run a site. I know it isn’t being run by Gene Simmons or Angelina Jolie, but it still costs money.

Don’t be a jerk just because you don’t like the content. If the price is too high, don’t use that to justify your actions.
Just quit coming here.

Anonymous Coward says:

Why IP laws are so bad:

Quote:

But many of the technologies that these patents protect are so abstruse or vague that companies may end up running afoul of the law without even knowing it, said Bijal V. Vakil, a partner at law firm White & Case in Palo Alto, Calif.

It’s become a virtually unmanageable task to go and see if you have the freedom to operate,” he said. “Procedurally it would be impossible to check all of (the valid patents) – even large companies can’t afford to do that.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-apple-legal-war-android.html

Even science dedicated blogs are noticing.

Bob (profile) says:

Real content providers actually put a price at the door

Real content creators give content away all the time. When they want to charge, though, they put a price tag on it and make sure that the customer knows it’s there. That’s just how business is done. No one sends an invoice after the fact.

Sigh. The irony is that the web comic author is actually trying to monetize what is given for free– but with a legit form of business. There are t-shirts, coffee mugs and over five pages of stuff all available for a price.

I wish the author well because it’s tough to run a business. I just wish the author had some sympathy for the other creators who are trying to do the same.

Chosen Reject (profile) says:

Re: Real content providers actually put a price at the door

The creator of the comic gets the digital age though. He has an infinite good that he gives away (the comic) and sells scarce goods that are not easily reproducible. He uses the infinite good to increase the value of the scarce good. Few if any people would buy this coffee mug for $17, but he uses the free infinite good to make that mug more valuable than a plain one that sells for $4.

No one is saying that creators shouldn’t get paid. You either don’t understand the arguments being made here, or you are being deliberately obtuse to further some agenda of yours.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Real content providers actually put a price at the door

So you admit that not everything needs a price tag and that some things drive the sales of other things.

Well dumbass welcome to the radio era or the television era you are just late to the game just about a 100 years or so but you will catch up I’m sure.

Now please can you point me to the nearest website of a musician so I can rip his music from his own website and have him closed for inducing piracy.

Jose_X (profile) says:

Re:

>> Sorry, but standing next to someone, creating nothing, and then providing an invoice for payment does not comprise the creation of “an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression”.

Is promoting a narrow interpretation of “tangible medium of expression” and of “authorship” that excludes the observer’s brain your way of saying that you don’t value the work, creativity, spontaneity, privacy sharing, and inspiration that results from hanging out with someone else? Do you really want to go on record as saying you don’t value the creator’s expression and impression on his/her audience’s mind and the work required on his/her part?

What if the audience then goes on to create a work that derives ideas and expressions arrived at with the help of that valuable hanging out moment? What if the observer records the moment and makes lots of money afterward? Are you saying that you think the original creator is not entitled to a cut of the profits or injunctive relief?

What kind of anon ac troll are you!

It’s because of fake trolls like yourself that in this day and age we still have many slaves performing and creating purely and exclusively for the sake of others without receiving a dime in compensation.

It’s as if you don’t value people’s time or think creativity falls from a tree.

Hanging-outers have been exploited for far too long, and if our Congress depends on the opinion of people like yourself, it will be years still before this injustice has been corrected.

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