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Master Geek

#576779 3-Feb-2012 12:46

freitasm:

Corporations pay what the market dictactes. Consumers who keep buying their iPad, iPhone and Xbox, while knowing really well what's going on in China are responsible for this too.

I don't think the "corporation pay" argument applies in the creative industry as much as in the electronics industry. It's not like movies are made with slave labour.

Ha! You've never worked as a production runner on a set! :-)

Seriously, though, it's exactly the corporate mentality that is the problem regarding copyright. The corporates (labels and studios) want to make as much money as they can without adjusting their business models to changes in technology and the marketplace. Look at Hollywood accounting, where films never make a technical profit, thus they don't have to pay out on profit sharing agreements (for example, the Tolkien Estate's lawsuit against New Line for not paying royalties on LOTR). The same thin occurs in music, where artists wind up so in debt to their labels with inflated production costs that they barely break even. It's the studios and the labels that are pushing the extension of copyright to the point of unsustainability.

gzt

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#576786 3-Feb-2012 12:52

KiwiNZ: How many Musicians are there? and that's a monopoly ????????????????????????????????????????????????

How many studios are there? and that's a monopoly ??????????????????????????????????????????????????

So, what you are trying to say is if you don't like the media company's terms of trade and supported formats and limited distribution platforms for say "beyonce", that you should go and buy something else instead.

This is fine by me. I'm not arguing for piracy, I'm arguing that the level of control over the internet that we are granting to media companies and copyright holders in general is simply unnecessary for the protection and development of their business.

My points are these -

(a) If you want to open a record store to sell "beyonce" in any format you choose, legal online retailing should be that simple.
(b) Continuing to grant media companies and copyright holders the level of control they have is just supporting a few large players in their effort to control (and further retard) a market they do not understand.

freitasm

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#576790 3-Feb-2012 12:57

nzlemming:
freitasm:

Corporations pay what the market dictactes. Consumers who keep buying their iPad, iPhone and Xbox, while knowing really well what's going on in China are responsible for this too.

I don't think the "corporation pay" argument applies in the creative industry as much as in the electronics industry. It's not like movies are made with slave labour.

Ha! You've never worked as a production runner on a set! :-)

Seriously, though, it's exactly the corporate mentality that is the problem regarding copyright. The corporates (labels and studios) want to make as much money as they can without adjusting their business models to changes in technology and the marketplace. Look at Hollywood accounting, where films never make a technical profit, thus they don't have to pay out on profit sharing agreements (for example, the Tolkien Estate's lawsuit against New Line for not paying royalties on LOTR). The same thin occurs in music, where artists wind up so in debt to their labels with inflated production costs that they barely break even. It's the studios and the labels that are pushing the extension of copyright to the point of unsustainability.

Just to make it clear I agree copyright holders are doing it wrong by not using technology to extend their reach and market.

I can't agree with people using copyright holders' failure to do so as a justification to break the law. Get the law changed instead.

crackrdbycracku

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#576792 3-Feb-2012 12:58

nzlemming:
freitasm:

Corporations pay what the market dictactes. Consumers who keep buying their iPad, iPhone and Xbox, while knowing really well what's going on in China are responsible for this too.

I don't think the "corporation pay" argument applies in the creative industry as much as in the electronics industry. It's not like movies are made with slave labour.

Ha! You've never worked as a production runner on a set! :-)

Seriously, though, it's exactly the corporate mentality that is the problem regarding copyright. The corporates (labels and studios) want to make as much money as they can without adjusting their business models to changes in technology and the marketplace. Look at Hollywood accounting, where films never make a technical profit, thus they don't have to pay out on profit sharing agreements (for example, the Tolkien Estate's lawsuit against New Line for not paying royalties on LOTR). The same thin occurs in music, where artists wind up so in debt to their labels with inflated production costs that they barely break even. It's the studios and the labels that are pushing the extension of copyright to the point of unsustainability.

Putting the legality of this issue aside, do individuals have a different moral responsibility to corporations in this context?

We can all think of instances where a corporation has in effect 'bought' the law, United Fruit being one.

I can remember in the early days of MP3 downloading a rallying cry was: "I'm not ripping off the artist, the record company already did that. I'm ripping off the record company".

Does this have any justification?

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

tdgeek

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#576800 3-Feb-2012 13:11

I can remember in the early days of MP3 downloading a rallying cry was: "I'm not ripping off the artist, the record company already did that. I'm ripping off the record company".

Does this have any justification?

I don't think so at all. Two wrongs don't make a right. A similar issue was its ok to steal or to fake a theft as its only the insurance company.

As Mauricio stated just above, the media companies need to get themsleves up to date and use the technology to extend their reach and market. If everything was available online (music, movies, TV, games, software) at a price that reflected the avoidance in cost of packaging, media, freight, warehousing, retailer margin, then we all have a choice to buy at a shop, or buy online.

Brendan

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#576807 3-Feb-2012 13:28

tdgeek: Brendan.

Tony.

I fully understand your argument,

I do not think you do.

You are caricaturisng the debate in an effort to make it seem self serving and selfish on the part of your opposition.

if you wish to portray that I live in the dark ages,

No.

and do not understand, in order to minimise my input, that's fine.

No.

It is quite clear what illegal activities you support and why.

I have stated no personal ulterior motives.

And a world without copyright laws and censorship laws would be most interesting.

Indeed it would. But not unfamiliar. Most of history is an environment free of copyright laws, and even today we have many examples:

"There are numerous industries and products without copyright protection despite the creative effort going into them:

Fashion
Food industry (cannot copyright a recipe, or the look and feel of even the most unique dish)
Automobiles (cannot copyright their sculptural design)
Furniture
Magic tricks
Hairdos
Open source software
Databases
Tattoo artists
Jokes
Fireworks displays
The rules of games
The smell of perfume

In her TED-Talk, "Lessons from fashion's free culture", Johanna Blakley lists these examples, and points out these 'Low IP industries' are much bigger than 'High IP industries' (movies, books and music; compared in gross sales).[2] "
And to that I would add the majority of important Scientific findings.

And the infrastructure of the internet itself.

Off course that would have to include all goods and services, these are called patents, unless you prefer to exclude these facets of life that adversely affect you?

No. I regard Patent's (in their current form) as even more evil than copyright. And you should too.

I support copyright, patents, as and when required to allow the creator of anything physical or non physical to recover the costs of creation and to be rewarded for their efforts.

That may have been the original intent of them, but that is not how they are increasingly used.

There are flaws in copyright/patents, but the reasoning is sound.

I agree with the first, but I doubt the second.

I think we can come up with an alternative that has the advantages of a free-for-all system of innovation but also brings some form of incentive towards the inventor.

Some of the most fundamental innovations and knowledge we rely on every day were gifted to us by people who put YOUR welfare ahead of their wealth.

What if Newton had patented his formulas? Or Maxwell? And you had to pay a license fee every time you turned the light on or used a satellite?

Do any of your vaunted 'innovators' in your favorite industries pay their dues to the estates of Newton, Maxwell, Vint Cerf, or a thousand others? And it WOULD be thousands of others.

You would be bankrupt from birth - if the whole world followed the examples of the Microsoft's and Apples of the world.

No; the system is not just flawed - it was faulty from the start. It was never going to work for long. And now, in this age of instant communication and massive databases - it is falling apart.

I support censorship as and when required to protect the general populous from unsavoury content, or access to illegal activities.

Your authoritarian attitudes cannot survive Tony, just as the authoritarian structures elsewhere are falling - from most egregious to least, each in turn.

It started a long time ago. It accelerated with the 'Arab Spring', and is continuing now with the USA.

It will change the world. And it is LONG over due.

A pirated move or a shut down file sharing web site is a single atom in a galaxy of change.

gzt

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#576810 3-Feb-2012 13:34

Brendan: "There are numerous industries and products without copyright protection despite the creative effort going into them: [...] Open source software [...]"

You need to remove open source software from that list. Open source software is protected by copyright, and copyright is frequently used to defend it against incursion.

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MikeB4

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#576813 3-Feb-2012 13:36

gzt:
KiwiNZ: How many Musicians are there? and that's a monopoly ????????????????????????????????????????????????

How many studios are there? and that's a monopoly ??????????????????????????????????????????????????

So, what you are trying to say is if you don't like the media company's terms of trade and supported formats and limited distribution platforms for say "beyonce", that you should go and buy something else instead.

This is fine by me. I'm not arguing for piracy, I'm arguing that the level of control over the internet that we are granting to media companies and copyright holders in general is simply unnecessary for the protection and development of their business.

My points are these -

(a) If you want to open a record store to sell "beyonce" in any format you choose, legal online retailing should be that simple.
(b) Continuing to grant media companies and copyright holders the level of control they have is just supporting a few large players in their effort to control (and further retard) a market they do not understand.

They are not controlling the Internet they are acting to protect their rights afforded to them by law.

You can open Bricks and Mortar store and an online store selling "Beyonce" however you do so complying with the "rights holder" terms of sale. You do not have the right to download "Beyonce" from a file sharing site and sell that product or to give said product away without the conscent of the "rights holder"

I cannot see why this is so hard to understand, but I believe it is understood but the desire to take something for free ignoring the legal rights of the "rights holder" is greater.

crackrdbycracku

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#576815 3-Feb-2012 13:39

tdgeek:

I can remember in the early days of MP3 downloading a rallying cry was: "I'm not ripping off the artist, the record company already did that. I'm ripping off the record company".

Does this have any justification?

I don't think so at all. Two wrongs don't make a right. A similar issue was its ok to steal or to fake a theft as its only the insurance company.

As Mauricio stated just above, the media companies need to get themsleves up to date and use the technology to extend their reach and market. If everything was available online (music, movies, TV, games, software) at a price that reflected the avoidance in cost of packaging, media, freight, warehousing, retailer margin, then we all have a choice to buy at a shop, or buy online.

OK, I am surely one who has joined the call for a decent movie streaming service, like NetFlix. I don't download and I actually want creators to get paid, but I feel like the current distribution channels are ripping me off.

But if we are all buying DVDs from JB Hi-Fi et al or pay Sky subscriptions what incentive does the industry have to change?

What if we all used a VPN service and signed up to NetFlix or similar? It has been stated on here before that while this violates Ts & Cs this isn't the same as illegal.

I have wondered on here before if you could start a business providing 'VPN and NetFlix in a box' so to speak with some basic support. Would that be 'going too far'?

What other reasonable tools to encourage change to we have other than piracy?

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

Brendan

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#576816 3-Feb-2012 13:49

nzlemming: Nicely put, Brendan.

Thanks.

Another fallacy that tdgeek (and others, to be fair) has fallen for is that items somehow have an intrinsic value and that you are robbing someone by not paying them. While there may be a moral argument around rewarding artistic achievement, the item itself has no value other than that granted by the market place.

Exactly. And the market place has spoken.

The response from the copyright owners is "the market place is wrong - except when we say". It's a curious attitude from people who in one breath expound the virtues of the capitalist system and Ayn Rand, and in the next ask for protections, corporate welfare and bail outs.

Prices have been kept artificially high for years by the content industry because they controlled the means of distribution. Now, they don't. Value has an inverse relationship to scarcity - when you can make unlimited numbers of exact copies of an item for next to no cost, the price per item that is attainable becomes negligible.

Exactly.

tdgeek

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#576818 3-Feb-2012 13:55

Brendan:
I think we can come up with an alternative that has the advantages of a free-for-all system of innovation but also brings some form of incentive towards the inventor.

Brendan!

Firstly, while we disagree, and I do have something constructive to ask below, I do wish to let you know I appreciate the time and detail in your last post. Responses like that do add to this topic, irregardless of what side of the fence the reader is on.

I'm keen to hear what you suggest re the quote above. My key is giving cost recovery and reward, for a period, for the creators, whether that be music, movies, or cars. How can you balance the protection by copyright and patent aganst those who will digitally copy or physically copy, to reap the rewards of the creators creativity effort? From where I sit, it's a time thing, how long between protection and public property.

MikeB4

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#576820 3-Feb-2012 13:57

Brendan:
nzlemming: Nicely put, Brendan.

Thanks.

Another fallacy that tdgeek (and others, to be fair) has fallen for is that items somehow have an intrinsic value and that you are robbing someone by not paying them. While there may be a moral argument around rewarding artistic achievement, the item itself has no value other than that granted by the market place.

Exactly. And the market place has spoken.

The response from the copyright owners is "the market place is wrong - except when we say". It's a curious attitude from people who in one breath expound the virtues of the capitalist system and Ayn Rand, and in the next ask for protections, corporate welfare and bail outs.

Prices have been kept artificially high for years by the content industry because they controlled the means of distribution. Now, they don't. Value has an inverse relationship to scarcity - when you can make unlimited numbers of exact copies of an item for next to no cost, the price per item that is attainable becomes negligible.

Exactly.

If we want to pursue the value BS a House a Car a Boat only has the value placed on it. The argument regarding intrinsic value is again a smoke screen for those who desire something for nothing.

tdgeek

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#576821 3-Feb-2012 13:58

Brendan: .

Another fallacy that tdgeek (and others, to be fair) has fallen for is that items somehow have an intrinsic value and that you are robbing someone by not paying them. While there may be a moral argument around rewarding artistic achievement, the item itself has no value other than that granted by the market place.

Exactly. And the market place has spoken.

How can these items have no intrinsic value? I assume you refer to the download?

gzt

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#576828 3-Feb-2012 14:12

crackrdbycracku: I have wondered on here before if you could start a business providing 'VPN and NetFlix in a box' so to speak with some basic support. Would that be 'going too far'?

In NZ you would be breaking no law at present.

crackrdbycracku: What other reasonable tools to encourage change to we have other than piracy?

Piracy does not encourage the kind of change you want even one bit as far as I am aware, it just encourages silly and over the top law making.

Linuxluver

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#576830 3-Feb-2012 14:17

gzt:
crackrdbycracku: I have wondered on here before if you could start a business providing 'VPN and NetFlix in a box' so to speak with some basic support. Would that be 'going too far'?

In NZ you would be breaking no law at present.

crackrdbycracku: What other reasonable tools to encourage change to we have other than piracy?

Piracy does not encourage the kind of change you want even one bit as far as I am aware, it just encourages silly and over the top law making.

If anyone was to sell such a device in NZ you might find yourself indicted in Virginia by a Grand Jury and a warrant raised for your arrest......in case you ever travel anywhere.

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