It matters because the economic argument is the only marginally justifiable motivation for the heavy handed enforcement of copyright over civil rights. And I'm being very generous in using the word "justifiable".

> People pirate media because they don't want to pay for it.

People pirate media because they understand they shouldn't have to pay for it. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's). Everything else is either tax or extortion.

You know, passive phrases like "owning the rights" are so insidiously misleading. Nobody "owns rights", all that actually happens is that the rights of others get limited. That's how this convoluted artificial construct works.

No, I'm not denying that that leaves us with the original problem of stimulating the creation and distribution of original work.

But millions have woken up from the shared illusion of copyright, and no amount of enforcement, DRM or just incessantly repeating the words "stealing", "pirate" etcetera is going to put them back to sleep.

>>> People pirate media because they understand they shouldn't have to pay for it. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's). Everything else is either tax or extortion.

I guess I just come at this from a different angle. I never really felt that I was entitled to media that I didn't produce myself. And that if I wanted that media, there is a price to pay for it. And that if you don't want the media, you don't pay a price for it.

Am I missing something here?

People instinctively feel paying for property and services is justified, but not for information and intellectual property is just a way of trying to make people think information is property. If I steal something from you, I must have deprived you of it; copying is not stealing.

The very notion of ownership stems from physical scarcity, the concept does not logically transfer to digital information.

In a world where your beliefs are supported by the courts, a creator's only means to ensure a revenue stream from their creations is to present them only in controlled physical environments free of digitizers.

I don't think that's a better world than the one where creators can expect revenue by selling their digitized creations.

Bullcrap. They'd just have to make their money in ways that do not depend on distribution of non-scarce goods. And they already do.

Musicians, for example, are performers. They have a service to sell. That's how many make their bucks. There's models like Kickstarter, where you pay upfront - for the act of creating, not for the eventual distribution (which is costless). Donations or patronage can be a valid source of income, too.

Your claim that we need to restrict access to a good that is inherently not scarce (and indeed, not depletable) for artists to make a living at all is a disingenuous lie and flies in the face of reality.

If the only way a creator can make money is by using law to create artificial scarcity, then whatever he's creating isn't deserving of pay; if it were, the market would value it without the fake scarcity imposed by law. There was a time when creators were paid to create, rather than for content distribution, we need to return to those times.

You are simply defending the status quote without understanding the critique against it.

Only because laws force us to, not because it's the proper market solution to the problem. And it has nothing to do with being digital; if you think it does, you don't understand the complaint. All information should be freely copyable. Whether it's photocopying a book, or burning a copy of a CD, I've deprived no one of anything because there is no natural scarcity of anything that is copyable and thus no justification for ownership claims of pure information. If I see a chair you have that I like, and I build a complete perfect replica of it, I've not taken anything from you, you have no natural claim of damage.

Sure you will retort with yes there will be content, but it will be cheap, crap content and say goodbye to the next Harry Potter, Chris Nolans and World of Warcrafts of the world.

Copyright has worked because even due to the ability to easily duplicate content (previously via Xerox), now via the net, content creators see it as a viable way to protect their time spent creating something and to (hopefully) reward their efforts.

Secondly, absent ip, they'd just make more but cheaper movies to target more niche markets; the blockbuster isn't really a great business model to begin with, it just works because law makes an artificial market for it. If the market can't naturally support the blockbuster, then they should go away. A world absent more Michael Bay flicks is a better world anyway.

No it isn't because there is zero demand for those types of movies, in fact there is a huge demand. It is because of copyright that they get the up front funding as the studios can be sure they have protection to make up the cost at release time (if the audiences like the flick enough to go see it).

What a fucking loss for humanity.

I'm pretty sure JK Rowling would have written Harry Potter (the book) with or without IP laws. I'm pretty sure Notch would have written Minecraft with or without IP laws. I'm pretty sure there were several bloody fantastic games made in the 90s when game piracy was easier and more common.

IP isn't what makes people pay to see Batman. The loss of IP would not prevent studios from making a killing with Batman at a theater, they'd just have to be a touch more creative in controlling distribution, timing, and release of the official copy. Even without IP, they can contract with the theater to make it a violation of the contract for the theater to copy the film as a condition of getting it. IP isn't what protects the movie industry, it's what protects the home video industry and some of the long tail profits.

Also, making a great movie doesn't require 300 million dollars, and the world did just fine before 300 million dollars movies existed.

That's not the question. The question is whether you're entitled to prohibit people from sharing media with each other.

If you don't feel entitled to the media, nobody is saying you must get it. You're free to remain media-less.

The current view from the entitled that since it is easy to get for free, then there isn't any reason why it shouldn't legally be free otherwise. No amount of grand vision writeups on how information wants to be free will say anything different than this basic point.

Everything should be free, except of course whatever the entitled do for work, that obviously should be paid for, because hey that actually affects their income, not someone elses.

I never felt that an organization had the right to prevent me from accessing a piece of our culture because they have a piece of paper.

Copyright as it exists today transfers ownership of culture from artists to corporation; subsequent bartering of ownership means that the price _you_ want to pay goes nowhere near those what made it.

It is a travesty that Apple was _bragging_ that the Beatles music was in the iTunes store, as if that was some accomplishment of openness instead of lawyerly bickering.

Which is all to say: it isn't the paying for it that makes people oppose copyright. It's who we'd have to pay.

I am glad the courts have consistently ruled in favor of the producers over the privileged consumer class. We need more creativity and production. Production should be rewarded.

All paintings, music, theater, opera, digital photographs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera: So this is all free then? Sounds good to me. I mean, if you're telling me I'm entitled to all of this, I guess that's pretty cool. Not sure my friends who went to film school will like not having jobs, but if that's what the world owes me... too bad for them.

>> "Which is all to say: it isn't the paying for it that makes people oppose copyright. It's who we'd have to pay."

You don't like music executives.

I don't like banks.

But if I want to buy a house I'm going to have to go through one in all likelihood. Because I hate bankers, that does not entitle me to a free house.

And what do you do professionally? What if a large part of the country decided they don't like your industry, and that you shouldn't be paid for any of your services or goods?

Informational goods are nonrival: any number of people can use them without obstructing anyone else's use.

So normal property laws are not 'just as arbitrary and artificial' as intellectual monopoly laws: they are grounded in actual physical limitations.

The key difference between physical property and intellectual property is the ease of rights enforcement. It's easy to detect when someone has infringed your rights on your own physical property. The progress of the internet, on the other hand, makes it constantly harder to detect and punish infringement of intellectual property rights. It is still unknown whether reversing this trend will retard the potential of the Internet, but certain recent legislative attempts lead me to believe so.

I think that the debate will ultimately turn on the question of ease of enforcement. All the philosophical trappings of whether certain rights should be granted is irrelevant if they can't be granted.

Even this is far from universal. In many countries (Norway and Sweden for example), there are strict rules on what you can and cannot restrict people from doing on your land. You cannot stop me from walking across your land, camping on your land or foraging for food on your land (assuming of course I do these things in a reasonable and sensible manner, ie do my best to remain out of sight, don't camp too close to buildings, don't cut down trees or damage crops, don't stay in one place for too long etc, etc. ). Basically my right to free access to nature supersedes your right to do what you want with your land. The same sort of conceptual argument could be made about the "rights" to media.

People pirate media because they can. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's) because we can't get away without doing so due to technical and/or legal constraints. Everything else is rationalization.

> Does there need to be? People are taking something for free, something someone is trying to sell and does not want to be taken for free. Surely that is enough for illegal sharing of music to be considered bad? If an artist wants their music to be free they would make it free.

Most of the pushes for these laws and raids are done by studios who insist they are losing out, big-time. "Think of the jobs!" If the pirates cannot have their narrow anecdotal evidence, nor can the studios. ;)

"People are taking something for free" simplifies the issue, and misrepresents it as well. If I made a song and priced it at three billion dollars and thousands of people "stole" it, would it be the biggest theft in the history of mankind? The terms set out by which information can be exchanged should not be exclusively in control of the creator. Copyright has generally existed under the premise that society demands a little fair use in return. That should be based on what is practical to enforce, and partially on what benefits culture the most.

Consider that almost nothing can be done about piracy without sacrificing everybody's civil liberties. This is not a crackpot theory, technologies exist _today_ which end the ability of the government to enforce copyright or any other law over information being exchanged between two parties. The Internet would have to be deeply curated. Even that wouldn't stop it.

Are you willing to go that far to enforce copyright? If not (as I hope) you should support making non-commercial filesharing legal, and expanding fair use in other ways.

Yes. The question of morality require more than the simple fact that someone can gain something of value without loosing something of value in exchange.

A question asked by Eben Moglen (a professor in law historian and founder of FSLC), if bread could be copied with no costs by the process of pressing a button, what would the argument be to require more for bread than what a starving person would be able to pay? Would it be morally right to deprive a person of what he or she need to live when it cost you nothing to allow the person to survive? And if you do decide to deprive the person of that bread in a effort to give money for the first bread created, would the death of the starving man then be murder?

And before you say "but copyrighted works are not necessary for living", please consider the effect of education has on a person ability to survive. There has also been physcology experiments that has proven the need, the almost extreme need for culture we human beings have. Deprive people of it and there is physical effects from it.

I didn't want to try and make the point because I can't find the information I have seen before and I'm not confident in saying it, but I'm sure I've seen information shown before that if an album had 100,000 listeners 10 years ago it could have yielded x return (enough to justify the investment and risk) and now 100,000 album listeners might mean only 1,000 purchases, which is often not enough to justify the investment and risk. I don't even think there needs to be evidence to justify the point, because it's common sense: If 100,000 people consume something and only 10% of those paid for it that's worse than if 50,000 consumed it but 50,000 paid for it (accounting for listener growth, now vs. 10 years ago)

> "People are taking something for free" simplifies the issue, and misrepresents it as well. If I made a song and priced it at three billion dollars and thousands of people "stole" it, would it be the biggest theft in the history of mankind? The terms set out by which information can be exchanged should not be exclusively in control of the creator. Copyright has generally existed under the premise that society demands a little fair use in return. That should be based on what is practical to enforce, and partially on what benefits culture the most.

The cost of something does not matter when discussing whether or not it's right or wrong to take something. If a song costs $0.10 or $100 it's still wrong to take it. No, downloading a song that is priced at $3,000,000 isn't worse than downloading a song priced at $1, but that doesn't make either of them right? I'm not sure I entirely understand the point you're trying to make here.

> Are you willing to go that far to enforce copyright? If not (as I hope) you should support making non-commercial filesharing legal, and expanding fair use in other ways.

Personally I would much rather society just stopped being so damn selfish and accepted that if someone wants something they either meet the terms of the owner or just don't consume it. If I want an album that costs $10, I pay $10, if I want an album that costs $100,000, either I pay $100,000 or I don't get the album, I should not just download it for free and say "well it isn't worth $100,000 anyway, so whatever, fuck them, civil liberties!"

It's not about copyright, it's about respect for other human beings, respect for the people that create the content you consume. If someone prices something at $100,000 either you pay for it or you don't get it.

That's the problem. You're stuck thinking that a download == a lost sale, which is probably what supports the figures you gave. I'm pretty sure if I go download a thousand songs off of what.cd right now, I'm not draining a thousand dollars out of the music industry. In fact, I'm not draining a cent out of it.

A huge percentage of pirates not only had no intention on purchasing, but no money to purchase with. Not that they're necessarily entitled to the music, but the money you want to pretend is being lost just doesn't exist. What use is telling these people not to be so "selfish"? How is that a solution?

Piracy is a systemic problem due to copyright's flaws, not the other way around. You didn't provide a useful solution for any of this.

> No, downloading a song that is priced at $3,000,000 isn't worse than downloading a song priced at $1, but that doesn't make either of them right? I'm not sure I entirely understand the point you're trying to make here.

I was making the point that the author of some creative content should not be able to set all of the terms of their creation, including what they perceive as damages. (This is exactly what "fair use" is.)

No, no I'm not. Nobody believes a download is a lost sale, it's certain that there is crossover between people that would buy if they couldn't pirate but there is no way that every illegal download is a lost sale.

My point is that if you (a label, a musician) expect 100,000 people to listen to a song then you should be able to expect that 100,000 people will acquire that listen through means that you support? Either a download or a stream or any other "legitimate" method. If a label or artist only cared about securing the maximum number of listens then they would make the song free, but (most) choose not to, which would indicate they want every listen to be a paid listen (or through an official streaming system), correct?

> A huge percentage of pirates not only had no intention on purchasing, but no money to purchase with. Not that they're necessarily entitled to the music, but the money you want to pretend is being lost just doesn't exist. What use is telling these people not to be so "selfish"? How is that a solution?

I'm not pretending money is disappearing and then 100,000 illegal downloads = $100,000 in lost revenue. I'm stating that if an artist or label publishes a song online and they decide it will cost $1 to download then they should be able to expect 100,000 downloads to net them $100,000 in revenue. If 100,000 downloads means only net $5000 in revenue (95,000 illegal downloads, 5000 legitimate) then that is unreasonable and they should be able to consider that "bad", and make efforts to stop that (through shutting down of illegal download services).

> Piracy is a systemic problem due to copyright's flaws, not the other way around. You didn't provide a useful solution for any of this.

I don't have any solutions, but that doesn't justify piracy and make it acceptable, or something that should be allowed. Piracy should be illegal.

Now, I'm not saying that everything is nice and clean, and I believe that the amount of money spent is actually decreasing. But, frankly, it's been what, 12 years since Napster ? The music industry should, and probably does, takes piracy into account when planning their sales.

Scare tactics are a way to protect their business. I understand that. I would prefer it if they used different tactics to convince me to give them money, though.

No. Technology changes markets. The market needs to adapt, not ban the technology--banning the technology is just a shortsighted, temporary move. In the long run, the people who adapt to the new uses of technology are the ones who are going to survive (in the marketplace). "Buggy-whip manufacturers" and all that....

The argument that piracy isn't a lost sale just isn't true much of the time.

Respect is a two way street. I think the lack of respect you are noticing is a reactive response to infinite copyright and other heavy handed tactics.

I respect the people that create content I consume. That does neither imply that I am forced to pay for the distribution of their works nor that my right to share information of whatever kind should be limited.

>If someone prices something at $100,000 either you pay for it or you don't get it.

Of course I cannot force someone to give me something. However, someone who has acquired something cannot be forbidden from sharing it. In other words: your rights end where mine begin, and it is my good right to share what I have.

So, in your hypothetic scenario, a wealthy supporter or a bunch of fans pooling money could pay the $100k, then share the work with the world. I see no problem with this.

Informational goods are nonrival. The right and wrong of their use is fundamentally different from that of rival goods. One does not 'take' informational goods, one copies them. Normal property is, as a first simplification/approximation, justified by the loss of taking. And that because moral rules in general are, roughly speaking, justified by how they affect other people. Since copying lacks that effect of loss it obviously cannot reasonably be treated in the same way.

The GNU is exactly the opposite of normal copyright. The fact that it is based on copyright law is just an implementation detail because the FSF does not have enough clout to pass actual laws. It's a clever hack of the legal system, not an ideological reaffirmation of copyright.

The idea behind normal copyright--what some people here do not like--is to limit others' access to information. The whole point is that you cannot copy something without the right-owner's permission.

The GPL is the opposite. The core idea there is that you are not only allowed to make a copy of something, but you are also allowed to access the source code. In practical terms, this is just as important as being able to copy a program because the only meaningful way to make modifications is with access to the source code. Moreover, the license ensures that anybody using the licensed program keeps it free in the same way.

Essentially, where normal copyright keeps you from using the information, the GPL keeps you from using copyright law to keep others from using the information. In a very practical sense, something under the GPL is more free than something in the public domain--I could ship you something containing public domain code and not give you the source code or even let you modify it. I could not do that with the GPL.

Another way to look at it is that normal copyright gives rights to the "rights-holder" over the consumer. The GPL gives rights to the consumer (like access to source code) rather than to the rights-holder. The "restrictions" it places are the sort of restrictions any system based around rights has to have--you have the right to do almost anything as long as you do not infringe others' rights. In this context it means you can do anything you want (including selling the software) as long as you do not stop others from modifying and redistributing it.

In short: the GPL is the opposite of copyright and it gives the consumer more freedom. The only thing it stops you from doing is taking away others' freedom. The only reason it uses copyright is because copyright effectively allows you to write your own laws (but limited to whatever works you've copyrighted) without going through the legislature. In a perfect world, it would be unnecessary--all software would just be free as in freedom.

  The GNU is exactly the opposite of normal copyright. 
  [...] The idea behind normal copyright--what some people 
  here do not like--is to limit others' access to 
  information. The whole point is that you cannot copy 
  something without the right-owner's permission.

They might choose the GPL for the reasons you state - or they might prefer a different license, like the Affero GPL, or GPL2 instead of GPL3. If we think that shouldn't be the developer's choice, whose should it be?

That's the fundamental split: copyright normally gives the creator the "right" to take away the consumer's rights; the GPL merely prevents this and maintains the consumer's rights.

As others have pointed out, the idea behind copyright is to give a creator a limited monopoly over some information (ideally in order to encourage arts and science). The GPL subverts this: not only does the initial creator give up the monopoly, but the license ensures that nobody can subsequently reclaim a monopoly on the work in question. That is, the GPL involves not only giving rights to your consumers but also making sure as many people as possible cannot take those rights away again.

Essentially, it shouldn't be the creator's choice at all. The consumer has some rights (like being able to see and modify what runs on their computer) and these rights should not be infringed. That's entire core of the GPL and that's why it's the opposite of copyright normally: it protects the consumer and not the producer. The fact that it happens to be implemented on top of copyright law really is an implementation detail--if it was possible to pass a law protecting the right of every computer owner to be able to access and modify any code running on their system, the FSF would surely support it.

In summary: the GPL is about the consumer where copyright is normally about the producer. That's why they are different.

"Freedom to be shot", and "freedom to not be shot" is not the same thing. Yes, both include the world "freedom", but its not the same kind of freedom. Same goes for rights, laws, and in this discussion even software licenses. What count is the Intent and what real world effects it has.

This isn't always the case. MGMT comes to mind as a band who wanted to release their album (Congratulations) for free download but the studio or producer or whoever wouldn't let them. This isn't always the case I'm sure, but it's also not a fair statement to say that if you can't get an album for free it's the artist who wants it that way. There's a lot of people that have their fingers in the pie.

They made their band a business: they have to deal with the consequences. Using MGMT as an example of how "bad" record companies are is very disingenuous, they chose to sell out.

If technology renders something unnecessary, we should let the firms making the unnecessary product(s) disappear, rather than totally distorting markets, changing existing laws and reducing civil liberties to keep the markets-as-they-currently-exist around.

The only answer to that is to claim something more than "just a business" about making music or movies (or whatever "Intellectual Property" notion you want to push). At that point, you've departed from treating things legalistically. You have to start allowing for philosophical considerations.

Technology has not rendered copyright unnecessary. Yes, it is easier to mass-infringe these days than in the past but you must remember that, not only has it been possible (and generally easy) to infringe upon copyright, but that that is the very reason why copyright exists in the first place.

Intellectual property is more than a business and it's silly to claim otherwise. To quote the US Constitution on the matter:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

This is the clause that essentially says "People can copy the work of others so in order to encourage creation we will allow creators an exclusive monopoly for some time after which it will belong to the public."

The problem with copyright is not that the industry is trying to pretend that it's not easy to copy because that is really nothing new; the problem with copyright is that the idea of "limited Times" has gotten ridiculous but that is an entirely different conversation.

Or is your viewpoint more along the lines that you still want them to make this so-called unnecessary product, but due to your "philosophical considerations", you feel that it's okay to take a copy of the product without paying the asking price?

The recording companies are what come to my mind anyways... shrugs

Music creation is still an unsolved problem. Previously, financing of music creation was tied to distribution. Now that distribution is unnecessary, we need to rethink how society should promote not only creation of music, but of all intellectual capital.

Record labels provide a lot of value, they provide the funding to produce albums, to go on tours, they provide the marketing experience and reach to take a band from small to big. Labels don't just take a chunk and provide no value, otherwise why would anyone sign? Labels provide a lot of value: value that (apparently) nobody on the internet understands.

Justin Bieber is a great example, he was a dumb kid on Youtube singing songs and had a small fanbase, he could have continued alone to make songs and maybe sell them on Bandcamp and maybe make a few thousand $, instead he chose to sign with a label and today is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. He is a global brand. Would Justin Bieber be worth $xxx,xxx,xxx today if he stuck it alone? Has any independent musician ever done that before? The value of labels is clear.

People don't need labels now to build a following, that much is true, but that doesn't mean labels should not expect the same protections that other business types get. If a label has a product they should have reasonable expectations of control over that product, this includes making it illegal to steal that product.

I really don't follow music much, I have a tin ear, as they say. I merely see Music-production-as-big-business doing a lot of things (lobbying, propagandizing, maybe even comment trolling) that seem, well, authoritarian, totalitarian and not for the general good. Specific laws that promulgate what I see as a false-to-fact concept, "Intellectual Property" mostly have the backing of music and movie production companies, and pharmaceutical companies. Those companies appear to me, an outside observer, to be less than helpful to the general populace. If they need to drastically curtail civil liberties for success in the market, let the companies fail.

That's because they sold "their" music.

The fact that you can't give away something after you sell it doesn't imply that you can't give something away that you still own.

> There's a lot of people that have their fingers in the pie.

Only if you sell them the pie.

It doesn't seem like enough to me. Failing to conform to other people's personal preferences is not, in and of itself, bad. Some artists might prefer that their music only be played in appropriately serious and contemplative situations, but I wouldn't consider you a bad person for playing their stuff as background music while you clean — primarily because it doesn't hurt anyone.

The question of injury is very central to many people's ideas of morality. Other people's idiosyncrasies are less likely to weigh heavily in the estimation.