My weak counterargument: that stifles reporting and leads to hoarding of information.
I am an investigative journalist and I specialize in locating and acquiring video of relatively recent catastrophic events. Nearly all of the material I obtain is in the public domain, but 100% of it what I publish was not publicly known to exist prior.
I go to extreme lengths to ensure that I only publish derivative works with inextricably intertwined original creative additions, thus ensuring that I can protect my breaking stories for a decent amount of time. Anyone who wants to broadcast or otherwise use it will either have to obtain the underlying material independently (often impossible), or license it from me. If I didn't do that I wouldn't be able to pay my bills through my work.
Because sweat of the brow and hot news are not protectable, and because the above process can be extraordinarily time consuming (often amounting to the creation of a docudrama TV episode), I have been sitting on a few huge stories for nearly two years.
(I learned a hard lesson early on by not doing that with the first major piece I published. I published original raw footage that had taken me months of hard work to obtain and whose existence no one else was aware of. Within a few hours of me publishing it the footage was on every news channel in the world. Some credited me but most didn't even do that. Never again! Out of spite I still refuse to sell my material to the news station that was first to copy that video.)
Really? Okay.... For the sake of rounding out your universe, allow me to introduce myself. I'm your black swan. Not a failed performed or author "of some description"; not a successful one either.
As you are no doubt aware, copyright infringement describes a nearly limitless variety of scenarios and some are unarguably more egregious and intentional than others. (For example, Stephanie Lenz could reasonably embody one end of the spectrum and at the other end... I'm not certain, but media piracy rings and their leadership would probably fit the bill.)
I believe that a time-limited strictly enforceable protection for original creative expressions is a good thing. I want that to exist and I am glad that it generally does. I believe that private property rights are important and that intellectual property should be included in that word's definition.
Just as stealing a candy bar from CVS is theft, so too is robbing a bank. Just as Lenz didn't intentionally have Prince music playing I think that an honest person can accidentally steal a candy bar by absent-mindedly putting it in their pocket or something and not realizing until later. Do I think the thief did something terrible? No! Did they steal? Yeah.
I'm not sure how I feel about the provision for statutory damages in copyright infringement cases, but even in that framework the mandatory damages have a range. Lots of people know about the $150,000 maximum penalty per infringement (plus attorney's fees). It's pretty wild. But fewer people talk about the existence of a minimum: which is $250. That's a big difference, and arguably the legal system also recognizes that theft may be an accurate word in describing what's happening at both ends of the spectrum but there's a tremendous amount of nuance in there which you are obscuring by putting everyone in the same basket.
Do you engage in piracy of music / software / film / books / porn / etc.?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
My weak counterargument: that stifles reporting and leads to hoarding of information. I am an investigative journalist and I specialize in locating and acquiring video of relatively recent catastrophic events. Nearly all of the material I obtain is in the public domain, but 100% of it what I publish was not publicly known to exist prior. I go to extreme lengths to ensure that I only publish derivative works with inextricably intertwined original creative additions, thus ensuring that I can protect my breaking stories for a decent amount of time. Anyone who wants to broadcast or otherwise use it will either have to obtain the underlying material independently (often impossible), or license it from me. If I didn't do that I wouldn't be able to pay my bills through my work. Because sweat of the brow and hot news are not protectable, and because the above process can be extraordinarily time consuming (often amounting to the creation of a docudrama TV episode), I have been sitting on a few huge stories for nearly two years. (I learned a hard lesson early on by not doing that with the first major piece I published. I published original raw footage that had taken me months of hard work to obtain and whose existence no one else was aware of. Within a few hours of me publishing it the footage was on every news channel in the world. Some credited me but most didn't even do that. Never again! Out of spite I still refuse to sell my material to the news station that was first to copy that video.)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's still theft of a kind, in other words.
Really? Okay.... For the sake of rounding out your universe, allow me to introduce myself. I'm your black swan. Not a failed performed or author "of some description"; not a successful one either.
As you are no doubt aware, copyright infringement describes a nearly limitless variety of scenarios and some are unarguably more egregious and intentional than others. (For example, Stephanie Lenz could reasonably embody one end of the spectrum and at the other end... I'm not certain, but media piracy rings and their leadership would probably fit the bill.)
I believe that a time-limited strictly enforceable protection for original creative expressions is a good thing. I want that to exist and I am glad that it generally does. I believe that private property rights are important and that intellectual property should be included in that word's definition.
Just as stealing a candy bar from CVS is theft, so too is robbing a bank. Just as Lenz didn't intentionally have Prince music playing I think that an honest person can accidentally steal a candy bar by absent-mindedly putting it in their pocket or something and not realizing until later. Do I think the thief did something terrible? No! Did they steal? Yeah.
I'm not sure how I feel about the provision for statutory damages in copyright infringement cases, but even in that framework the mandatory damages have a range. Lots of people know about the $150,000 maximum penalty per infringement (plus attorney's fees). It's pretty wild. But fewer people talk about the existence of a minimum: which is $250. That's a big difference, and arguably the legal system also recognizes that theft may be an accurate word in describing what's happening at both ends of the spectrum but there's a tremendous amount of nuance in there which you are obscuring by putting everyone in the same basket.
Do you engage in piracy of music / software / film / books / porn / etc.?