(and not only can I and others provide several quotes supporting our position that the founding fathers didn’t believe copy’right’ to be a natural right, notice how IP maximists will fail to provide a single quote supporting their position).

Since this post’s discussion is about moral arguments (Mike should have predicted it would happen…), let me present mine:

Everything you “create” is a derivative of things other people “created” in the past. It is immoral to forbid other people from doing the same.

>>>This is why you, and your paytard elk will always fail.

That’s quite a question-and-antlers session . . .

One word: Scarcity.

The underlying principal of all economics is that for every satisfied want, there is an opportunity cost- Another want which cannot be satisfied due to limitations on resources. Price is a measure of scarcity; one must sacrifice more to obtain an expensive good than a cheaper good.

Unlike a house, car, or piece of furniture, an item of “Intellectual Property”, one created and available for distribution at no extra cost to the producer, is no longer scarce, as there is nothing that must be sacrificed to obtain the good. Because no scarcity exists, and price is a measure of scarcity, such goods should be available without cost.

I know the answer from the “freetards” (You shouldn’t) so I’d like to hear from the “IP-tards”.

Let’s say I want to set up a local radio station. I’ve gotten an FCC license (or run a low-power station the doesn’t require it), taken my purchased CD collection, burned them all to a SAN and broadcast 24x7x365. I’ve even managed to find local advertisers who want to buy blocks of time and add in my own commentary occasionally.

Why should this radio station have to pay for an additional broadcast license? The music played is legitimately purchased. There’s no demonstrable harm to the music producers, the artist or anyone else in the production chain.

Of course, people listening can record the songs from the radio, but they’re able to do that regardless of the licensing.

Where is the harm to anyone beyond the producer’s insistence they deserve extra money for what’s (essentially, if not practically) free advertising for their artists?

Hate to repeat myself, but there’s a simple answer that applies to all goods, not just copyrighted goods…

One word: Scarcity.

The underlying principal of all economics is that for every satisfied want, there is an opportunity cost- Another want which cannot be satisfied due to limitations on resources. Price is a measure of scarcity; one must sacrifice more to obtain an expensive good than a cheaper good.

Unlike a house, car, or piece of furniture, an item of “Intellectual Property”, one created and available for distribution at no extra cost to the producer, is no longer scarce, as there is nothing that must be sacrificed to obtain the good. Because no scarcity exists, and price is a measure of scarcity, such goods should be available without cost.

This is all ridiculous. Fuck the artists. Period. I don’t care whether they make six hundred billion or sixty bucks next year. Fuck them. If they want to make money, they should do more than entertain people. Let them go dig a ditch. Maybe we’ll have better quality music because it will come from someone with life experience instead of someone with gold bars under their pillows.

FUCK THE ARTISTS. STEAL EVERYTHING THEY HAVE. I’m not talking about infringement. I’m talking about going into their house and actually taking things of value. Lets show them what it means to have someone actually steal from them. Infringement won’t mean so much then.

If the founding fathers believed that copy’right’ is a natural right, why is their purpose of existence to promote the progress? The logical conclusion is that they believed that its purpose is to promote the progress, not to fulfill some natural right that you think you have, because they believed that you have no such natural rights.

(and if the founding fathers believed such a natural right exists, why did the founding fathers not require it to be granted. Instead, they only give congress permission to grant it to promote the progress, they do not require congress to grant it. Perhaps they make no such requirement because they believe that no such requirement should exist. It makes sense that they believe that no such requirement should exist because they do not believe copy’right’ is a natural right.

The context of patents and copy’right’ were often discussed together and they were written together. The same general attitude about ideas that apply patents can reasonably apply to their concept of copy’right’ as well. Heck, Jefferson didn’t even really believe anyone had a natural right to his house or land.

“It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance.”

How much more do you think that applies to ideas and books (read what he wrote). No one is entitled to a monopoly on anything and its everyone’s natural right to copy as they please. These laws exist for one reason and one reason alone, to promote the progress, not to enforce a right that artists don’t have.

“By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common”

It’s everyone’s natural right to copy whatever they please as they please. The founding fathers believed this. Just like its everyone’s natural right to use any piece of land that as they please, the same thing applies to ideas and expressions, even moreso. That’s why the constitution allows their existence only for the purpose of promoting the progress, not for the purpose of protecting some ‘right’ that artists allegedly have. They believed no such right existed. Provide me quotes that suggest otherwise.

You are confusing the morality of following a law with the morality of the law itself. You are also confusing ownership and transaction of ordinary physical property with those of abstract objects.

The basic logical/physical fact is that abstract objects are infinitely reproducible. So a law or rule that constrains transactions to only symmetrical pay-for-copy is necessarily restricting what would otherwise be available.

Why restrict a beneficial abundance, where there is no essential need? Any rule that does that really ought to seem immediately suspect morally. And for any ‘natural rights’ position it seems impossible that it can ever give a satisfactory answer.

The response that pay-for-copy pays for production fails, because there is nothing *essential* in that arrangement. Logically, the copies depend on production, not the reverse; and it is quite possible for production to be paid for in other ways. So pay-for-copy is neither forced by necessity, nor provides something otherwise unavailable that would compensate for loss of use of copy abundance.

The response that pay-for-copy benefits the ‘owner’ fails, because it is not a *universalised* justification. A moral rule is one that makes sense for all. It is justified not simply by its gain for an individual, but as something that works for everyone. Since pay-the-‘owner’-for-copy restricts access to the abundance of copies, but only to the benefit of an individual, or in aggregate to no net benefit, it is not persuasive morally.

The only reasonable argument for pay-for-copy is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market. This is a pragmatic moral argument: one that is a matter of evidence and practicality (neither of which currently stands up well) — so if you want to argue for copy-restriction, you need to set to work there.

I think people simply expect that if they offer something for sale, that if people want it to consume it, they have to pay for it.

Oh goody, because I offer licenses for sale to people allowing them to breath the air on planet Earth.

“But don’t think you’re entitled to the benefits of having something that you didn’t pay for.”

Really? How much did you pay for the benefit of posting your comment here? Are you breathing the air? Have you bought one of my licenses?

This is a simple and moral concept that I never see addressed here. I wonder why.

Perhaps you have reading problems, because it’s been “addressed” here many, many times. Now you know.

What did my parents offer for sale that I took without paying?

Were your parents slaves or did they generally expect payment for their work?

your parents sold you food clothes morality and ethics?

that must have been one helluva jacked up childhood.

He didn’t say they did, and neither did he say “don’t think you’re entitled to the benefits of having something that you didn’t pay for”, and the person he was replying to did. But, perhaps your own “helluva jacked up childhood” keeps you from seeing that.

enforces*

Copy’right’ is something that the government grants, its abolition is not, being that its abolition doesn’t require a government.

I see you have no answer or defense to the simple question I asked, and felt the need to change the subject.

I see that you seem to be unable to read. The very title of the article for these comments has the word “copyright” right in it, so it seems to be you who is trying to change subjects while accusing others of the same thing. What a hypocrite, but then that’s what I usually see from your type.

Well genius, if I only I had a copyright on air I would make you pay plenty for it, and see if you are of the same opinion about free/pay. If only I could somehow monopolize your water supply because the government granted me special privileges, I could make you thirsty. You seem to think that somehow creativity comes from individuals and not from education, culture and society in general. That in the larger picture creativity belongs to society in general, because it was society in general that took it to that point.

What if Michael Angelo had been raised by monkeys?

Red Hat is now only after a short time a Billion dollar company. You can download their product for free and legally off the internet. So how do they make their money, you figure that out genius.

“The whole idea was to get people to verbalize the depth of their moral depravity, and everybody came through with flying colors.”

But none could match yours, could they?

The sale of the copy comes with limited ownership rights…

Only legally (which isn’t being questioned), not morally. Legal doesn’t mean moral.

“The scenario you just described is exactly how music and movies work right now.”

Seriously? Check history. If you think we’re restricted in what can be published in mass media now, check out the times when the Church could dictate what would or would not be allowed to be printed. And the primary reason they got away with it was because they held the biggest purse strings, and could dictate who and who could not receive patronsism.

Copyright freed artists and writers from being under the thumb of powerful vested interests. While they still have sway, they have far less of it than they used to! And that’s an argument for Monopoly concerns, to prevent anyone like Murdoch gaining too much influence over any particular sphere of publishing and broadcasting. It is not an argument to abolish copyright.

So far, there hasn’t been an argument provided that abolishing Copyright will be for the public good. Reducing copyright terms may well be for the public good, but I’ve not seen a serious argument presented for why abolishing it wouldn’t push us back into stifled creativity of powerful patrons and rich galavants being the only cultural forces.

“People already have, and Mike has publicly stated that he’s fine with it.”

Mike also seems to have a sloppy understanding of copyright law there. He could well release every article he publishes on TechDirt into the public domain, simply by making an assertive statement forfeiting copyrights on the article. That he doesn’t means he retains copyright. I ask him to stand by his words, and start putting an assertive statement forfeiting copyright to his articles.

Then I may well start copying his works. Perhaps adding value by annotating them to point out where he misunderstands copyright law, makes contradictory statements, veers off into crazy libertarian land, and insults his readership by telling them what they are and are not allowed to argue.

Red Hat makes a lot of that money because companies are insecure. People will claim it’s for “support” but really it’s more like the illusion of support. Have you ever called tech support for an issue? How much would you realistically pay for that level of “support?” Companies will pay a lot more so their IT departments can have someone else to blame if things go wrong, because it is in their interest to hide the truth.

Many companies are realizing this and switching to CentOS instead, which is the free version of RHEL. RHEL is already purposefully behind the curve and CentOS is now lagging the latest RHEL release by five months. So can you really get RHEL for free? No, you can’t. They use trademark law to make it painful for people to get their actual, real product for free.

I think it’s more that copyright is less about the artists and a lot more about the public good.

My understanding of copyright was to allow producers of content enough time to make money from their productions before it became a public good.

As originally envisioned, copyright offered a limited window of exclusivity (if I remember 14 years with an option for another 14 years) before things slipped into the public domain.

This “limited” part has gone away. I don’t even see copyright maximalists trying to defend that life plus 70 years is in any way shape or form limited.

Thanks to copyright extension content – even content that the rights holder is not actively making available – is locked up by this over-long copyright to the detriment of the public good.

I can think of a few books I’d lost or have been destroyed that are no longer in print and because of the copyright it’s both a criminal and civil offense for anyone to copy and make this available, despite the rights holder clearly not caring that they make no money currently from the work.

How is this for the public good?

Quality content costs time and money to create.

Copyright applies automatically. There is no “time and money” test applied to qualify for copyright. Furthermore, I’ve seen plenty of “quality” content produced for little time and money, and plenty of crap produced with lots of time and money. So your time and money = quality thesis is just another example of more copyright bunk.

So you don’t think that books will continue to be written without copy’right’? I find that absurd.

Well, they never were written before copyright, were they?

/s

If I signed a contract with the renter that said I would pay them for every performance, I would have to pay him a cut.

That’s a legal, not moral, basis. Legal does not mean moral.

If slavery truly were in the best interests of the public, it would probably still be around. Whether moral or not.

So since copyright is still around, it must also be in the public good. Otherwise it would have been disposed of already, right?

Then you just sent your comment into public domain, didn’t you?

Heh, you wish, you dirty, rotten copyright violator! Copyright is automatic.

Oh, wait, you’ve been defending copyright. I guess you’re a hypocrite too! (of course)

Trickling words devolve
Haiku of nested comments
Hardly poetic

Could you please sign up for a real account and log in?

Could you please sign up for a real account (under your real full legal name and national ID) and log in? Thanks.

You did have a childhood, right? That’s something you get for ‘nothing’. The average cost of a child is $144k/annum, if all the things you get as a child that you don’t pay for.

I assume TechDirt also despises people who think we “deserve” things like “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

Your faulty assumptions are your own problem.

if “No one deserves anything”

But that doesn’t excuse your blatant misquotes.

I think you are missing the point here, the discussion is about copyright and free downloading. Irrespective of what you think about the particular company, the point being made is that copyright is not required to maintain a viable business.

Hey I work for the largest company in the world, and they have an IT department too, a Microsoft house if you will. And you really don’t want to know what I and all those that work with me think about that. It seems that they have outsourced to Disney Land when they should have outsourced to Google. A corporate service level should not “Waaaay” be lower than what I get at home for free.

Maybe you should read the book “Idea Man” by Paul Allen and his experiences with Bill Gates the shark champion of monopolies, patents and copyright. I have a copy of Bill’s original letter to the hobbyists if you want to see it.

But again the point, “copyright is not required to run a viable business” there are many others whose product can be downloaded by the user for free. Canonical, Google, Yahoo etc. etc. come to mind, but I suppose you will have some problem with them too.

If slavery truly were in the best interests of the public, it would probably still be around. Whether moral or not.

That all depends on how you define “public good”. The elimination of slavery definitely hurt the Southern US economy. Still, it was a “public good” to get rid of it.

No, those were the ones that the RIAA thought they could win.

Don’t be stupid the GPL grants you the right to get RHEL for free if somebody gives it to you, so it is free so free that CentOS can be done and nobody complains about it, but if it was you, you would be like “OMG those thieves, they are robbing me” on the other hand the open source community look at it and say “Cool!”.

About support, yah, yah, yah is all about fear right?
Not because people need something they can use and don’t have the money to expend on other solutions and the proof that it makes money despite being free is that RHEL is almost a billion dollar company already.

Also there Oracle Linux(from Oracle LoL WTF), Scientific Linux(from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Yellow Dog Linux, ClearOS and others is that free or what?

I just believe you are an idiot.

If he points to your answer before would you be satisfied?

oh look, we’re back to Karl reading into the law what he wants to see.

copyright does promote progress by protecting artists.

see what I did there? That was easy.

What exactly do you think you will have to copy if there is no financial incentive to publish.

“copyright does promote progress by protecting artists.”

It’s not meant to promote the progress of the protection of artists, it’s meant to promote the progress of the sciences and the arts. You’re confusing the sciences and the arts with the scientists and the artists.

(and if that’s not what you’re assuming, then your question is irrelevant. Why even ask it?).

Can you understand why the church was able to do what they did?

They had the monopoly, nobody could do squat without paying them up and that is one of the reasons in many of the revolts of the commons why religious figures where slaughtered, the modern day equivalent are artists trying to impose absurd norms to people for which in the end they will get “slaughtered” too, that is why copyrights will grow and be repealed to rise again and restart the cycle.

The difference is that today people don’t need to kill artists to accomplish that task they can and will migrate to free legal alternatives.

This is why people don’t respect copyright because is the same thing the church was doing in medieval times.

About Mikes copyright instances oh well he made a public statement already saying that there is no permissions needed to copy or reuse his work on this blog and that is valid in any court of law as a contract.

Although it would be practical to have some place with this written for easy access and linking he already gave those rights up and did not apparently revoked that statement.

Can you please show us how the church is different from artists today?

Both claim control over something, both keeps creating absurd rules and now copyrights is feeling the wrath of society just like in medieval times when people got fed up with the monks.

“But if I put my couch up for sale, and you want to buy it, BUT you don’t agree on the value, I don’t get paid and you still get the couch?”

The day that I can freely make copies of your couch is the day that your argument makes sense. The difference in this analogy is that, just because I get the couch doesn’t mean you lose the couch. You still have it. I just made a copy. Sure, I get the value of the couch, but you get the value of the air you breath and you’re not paying me for it. So what?

“The only difference is you can take the “couch” (media) without paying and without fear of being charged by law enforcement.”

No one is taking the couch, we’re just making copies.

“That’s not how it works and you know it.”

Only because taking the couch deprives you of it. But making a copy of it does not.

If you have the right to that license, I’ll be happy to pay.

I can prove that I have the right to my license, the one for music.

Can you prove that you have the right to your license for the sun?

Try again.

Again, we’re confusing a legal right with a moral right. We’re not discussing whether or not you have a legal right, we’re discussing whether or not you ought to have such a legal right.

or, rather, you’re confusing, not me.

Also if you are under the illusion that the government can do anything about it, you are mistaken, the people in this instance are the ones holding all the cards is not for you to decide how people should use something because for they are the ones that permit your deal to exist in the first place, those silly regulations worked well with entities that depend on the state to exist, it doesn’t work so well on people who don’t depend on the state for them to exist.

Further your assertion that without copyrights, art would be pushed to powerful patrons and rich galavants is ridiculous, copyright empowers the big boys(the powerful patrons and rich galavants) already most movies, films and music are all “produced” by those people buying the rights of small content producers and being controlled by those people, case in point 90 or 80 percent of all music released is owned by 3 labels in the U.S., most movies are from the big studios, explain again how is that different from medieval times again?

But if I put my couch up for sale, and you want to buy it, BUT you don’t agree on the value, I don’t get paid and you still get the couch?

No,you get to keep your stinky old couch and I can go build my own copy if I want to.

That’s not how it works and you know it.

That’s exactly how it works (although you may wish I *didn’t* know it).

Law enforcement must be able to somehow protect the “couch” owner.

From the couch copier? Sounds kind of corrupt to me.

And that is indeed what law enforcement is finally doing.

What a shame.

Which makes Mike Masnick and the rest of the freetards here very angry.

And the IP-tards very happy.

If the public believes a law is wrong, like slavery, there will be a majority of people that congregate and change the law.

There is nothing resembling a majority that say copyright is wrong.

Just a minority that find it annoying; those that consume in society but do not contribute back. Leeches.

it’s my moral right to copy as I please

And I think it’s my moral right to come over and repeatedly kick you in the balls.

But breaking the law seems rather immoral to me, so maybe you should reassess your copying and I shouldn’t put my boots on just yet…

Morality is subjective. There is no true definitive moral or amoral rule. I pointed out early on that the only means to examine this issue is a legal one.

Tell you what, I’ll go ask my friend who just self published an album via all these new e-publishing forms, if they think they shouldn’t have copyright on it… But I think I know what the answer is going to be. Or I could ask the friends who are e-book publishers, writers, and screen-writers if they could still do what they do without copyright.

I see a lot of “I want it free” weenies arguing against having any kind of Copyright at all. I see very few, if any, of the people who actually produce the content they want arguing against Copyright.

“If the public believes a law is wrong, like slavery, there will be a majority of people that congregate and change the law.”

We have to start somewhere, and these discussions offer a starting point.

“Just a minority that find it annoying; those that consume in society but do not contribute back. Leeches.”

You must be referring to the **AA and the corporations, who consume the benefits of their monopoly rents over cableco and airwave broadcasting and content but do not produce anything. The majority of people do not believe in these laws, ie: see China.

“I pointed out early on that the only means to examine this issue is a legal one.”

So if the law made killing your first born mandatory, then doing so is moral.

You seem to willfully ignore context. All of those instances are art being sold as art.

What’s art supposed to be sold as, flying monkeys?

Where did I say that? Oh right. Never.

Michaelangelo, Da Vince, Cicero, Archimedes, Mary Shelly, Bram Stocker, Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare etc etc etc, there is actually a couple of thousand years worth of culture out there.

In modern I could copy, use and sell, Big Bucks Bunny and others.
Aside from that I want to know when financial incentives cease to exist if ever copyrights disappear.

Are writers not paid to give lecturers?
Are musicians not paid to perform live or to endorse something?
Are movie makers not able to sell anything despite competition?

Are those not financial incentives?
Or is that you think they are just not enough?

Who claimed that no books would be written without copyright? The question is whether or not the current output would be maintained.

I’m not saying that things should change just because I want them to, I’m saying that I’m part of the reason that things should change because, as a member of society, the government should partly represent me (instead of only representing its corporate sponsors, which is currently the case). Then I’m telling others, and hopefully the government, what changes I would like to be made, because for the government to represent me, I must communicate my position, and I’m telling others the reasoning behind my position so that others can consider it and perhaps they will hold the same position. If they agree with my reasoning, and if enough people agree, then things should change because the will of the government should serve the will of the people.

After all, why should copy’right’ last 95+ years just because big corporations want that? The government is clearly not representing the will of the people and that’s partly why I think things should change.

Find me a professional screen play writer who will say they could make a living without copyright.

Just one.

“In fact, no one published music for sale!”

But music was still produced.

“TV and Radio are live performances only. No actor or singer will consent to be recorded for TV or Radio re-play, since they want the money from performances.”

Actors and singers generally do not hold the copy’right’ over such broadcasted performances already, yet they consent to such things.

“If they were recorded, then the TV station could keep playing it without ever having to pay them again!”

That’s already the case, because the TV stations often hold the copy’rights’ already. Yet these things are still created.

If the entire culture in question agreed on this action, then yes. Morality is defined by society. It used to be considered moral to own slaves. It used to be considered moral to burn heretics. In some cultures, it was considered moral to perform ritual sacrifices. Treating women as property was considered the just and moral thing to do.

Morality is an empty word that only means what we decide it to mean.

According to the person I am discussing this with, apparently it is meant to be sold as if it were a car or a house.