Answer the rest of my questions, mendax.

@ag - it is never stealing; you're conflating stealing with copyright infringment because you know we all agree that stealing is wrong; and you make the claim that copyright infringment is wrong.

This isn't just semantics - you're trying to redefine copyright infringment so that **everyone** will agree with your position. And people like the RIAA have been using this very tactic for years.

Copyright law was originally imagined as a way to promote cultural and creativity. This is not the effect it currently has.

The publishing industry has a strangle hold over 'popular' music. And as such limits creativity; They are the ones pursueing ISP who allow access to the pirate bay, and probably also trying to get the FCC to change the laws on net neutrality.

If this law was changed, as it should be, more musicians would be forced to take the (successful) route which Amanda Palmer has demonstrated. You say you're ok with giving stuff away for free, but not with these other people stealing... well they're NOT stealing, and the very principles which copyright infringment are based on are flawed.

The technology has made the old distribution model obsolete; and has proven that copyright infringement is a good thing for culture. There exists a copyleft movement for a reason. Many people beleive this.

'' If I buy Microsoft Office, and then am done with it, it is not stealing to pass this to a friend if the software is uninstalled from my computer. '' - yes, but it may well be a violation of your end-user licensing agreement; because corporations are continuing to try and extract as much as the can from their intellectual property as they can.

Did you know that Windows 8 licenses live and die with the laptop they are installed on? They have license code written onto a chip so you can't transfer the software to another machine. This makes little difference to most people, but it is a clear step away from the idea you have of what is fair use.

And looking at actual copyright statements (on books) you see something like: "No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher"

Does that also mean you can't reproduce it with your own mind? I mean a biological system definitely fits into the area of 'any form or any means' - you can't tell you friend the story you read without violating copyright.

And the obvios next step for publishers is to protect their investment by figuring out how to stop you from sharing. This greatly undermines the cultural phenomina of storytelling. We don't have the tech yet to do, but then three years ago you could remove windows from your computer and sell it seperately... Things change.

'Given 1a to 1 , on what basis do you have the right *not* to pay the $5 I am asking?'

You are not asking, you are demanding.

And your rights are not enforcable; thus demands will be met with scorn.

INFACT by demanding you make yourself out to be an asshole, who cares little for our culture and society, and your desrve nothing but scorn.

You are also not aware of how crowd-funding works. You can now ask for money to MAKE your albumn in the first place, and people may choose to give you money first.

You have missed the turning of the century.

"What gives you the right to take it for free?"

What gives you the right to withold your music?

'1a. The album of music only exists because I created it'
- notwithstanding kickstarter: if you didn't want it to become a part of the public domain you shouldn't release it. It may not have existed

'1b. I spent hundreds of hours creating it - hours that I therefore did not spend flipping burgers, teaching people how to ski, or whatever you do to pay the bills,'

- You are entitled to make this investment yourself. That doesn't mean you're entitled to be paid. You have no 'right' to demand my money; you CAN ask for donations.

'1c. I still have bills to pay, just like you do.'

And if you were worried about that then you would want to be pretty certain that your time investment was worth it before hand. Most musicians start out playing for their love of music not money.

'1 . I decided that if you want to hear MY music, that *I* created, it would be reasonable to ask you to pay $5.'

Your decision has been noted and asking for $5 may be reasonable. You may get many donations, but that does not perclude people who:

a) don't have the money to pay you.
b) don't like your music after downloading it once.
c) believe that paying into a corporate copyright system damages society.

@'Let's say this clandestine cameraman then posts these high-quality videos on his own "ski-sharing" website, and allows people to watch them for free. Let's say he openly markets the fact that his videos demonstrate 95% of the techniques you teach, and that therefore no-one need pay you for a ski-ing lesson - they can just watch the video.'

I'd like to quote the internet says: David Thornburg “Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be.”

@Jamie - the rest of your questions take a little more thought, and it's 01:30 so I cba to answer them right now. The comment I did answer was just patently obvious, and you're usually smart enough to realise for yourself that money isn't the be all and end all without needing it pointed out to you.

I like to liken the problem of legislating file-sharing type piracy to the sand-heap philosophical thought experiment. Given fair use, sharing content with another person is not a crime. Maybe this doesn't need to be said, but it does help me understand the complexity of the matter. So, paraphrasing the whole thing:

One grain of sand is not a heap, and two grains of sand on top of each other can hardly be called a heap either, but pile enough grains of sand on top of each other and you end up with a heap of sand. Is there some magical threshold where one grain of sand transitions the grains from not a heap into a heap?

For file-sharing, say I buy a CD and rip it onto my computer, and then play it on my iPod at a house party. A couple friends hear the song and ask if they can borrow the CD. They rip the CD onto their computers and do the same thing, playing it at their own party and sharing their audio files with others. At what point does this sharing change from fair use, to something wrong? Some companies are trying to redefine their terms of use to make it against their rules to even share their content once.

@orathiac stealing property. Not money. If I own something and you take it without permission, that is stealing. I'm not talking about lost revenue here. It is incredibly arrogant to think it is acceptable to take someone's property and then try to justify it to them.

Lol at your philosophy oh how software should be sold. Everything would be adware. Like a massive free iTunes app store. With no upgrades allowed for money. Thank God we don't live in your theoretical world that college students dream up without any idea that it costs a lot of money to develop a good product, and nobody will do this wwithout getting paid.

@ orthaic: "You are not asking [for $5], you are demanding."

Does this also hold true for everything that is offered for sale? Do you walk into the grocery store and say: "You're not asking 50 cents for that apple, you are demanding. What gives you the right to withold your apples? I am going to take them without paying, and that's not stealing."

(And before anyone says this is a false analogy because apples can't be copied, I will happily direct you to a website that shows you how to take a single apple, and make more apples from it)

"If you didn't want it to become a part of the public domain you shouldn't release it."

So it's basically your philosophy that anything which is created must either be offered to everyone for free, or not given to anyone at all?

By the way, I'd like to address an obvious cricitism of my stance *before* it is levelled at me - although mendax has implied it, I think. To wit:

"Aren't you a commie, Jamiet? Aren't you opposed to private ownership?"

The answer to this is yes - but we don't live in a communist society. I am commenting in the context of the fact that we live under capitalism, and under the rules of capitalism, an artist is entitled to make a living from their labours.

Why I download games? Game makers releases unfinished games at expensive prices and charge alot for small DLC what used to be free. They don't offer free demos and when it's good i'll consider to buy it.

Why I download series? I want to watch it when I want. Not several month after the release at fixed hours on my cable. Netflix is a good alternative and the content is poor. And everything is set automatically so there's no hassle.

Why I download movies? They make enough money off it and mostly I only watch a movie once. When they drop prices I might consider buying good movies.

But fuck TPB, that's a profit site. It's only good for keeping the focus from the good sites. Piracy is for me all about sharing and not making money off it. Private sites is where it's at: community based, non profit sites which focus is on sharing, community and good quality.

Wait, the Pirate Bay was making profits out of helping people steal the fruits of artists labours?

Well, fuck them twice then.

False analogy Jamie, it is more like buying the first apple (cause taking it would be stealing it) and then growing more of your own using hte seeds.

And yes, this is perfectly legal.

"So it's basically your philosophy that anything which is created must either be offered to everyone for free, or not given to anyone at all?"

- No, but practically once you start selling your something, people will start sharing it, and effectively put it into the public domain. That is the culture, that is what people think is ok to do.

The social norm should define the law not the other way round. AND it helps artists because they get a wider audience, sell more concert tickets, and have more fans willing to donate to their projects.

The example of Amanda Palmer is, in a way, an example of competition. The new model is better than the old, provides a better service, and is more efficient for both consumer and producer.

If you want to try to keep the old model alive you can try, you can invest in DRM - but that's a sub-standard product which people tend to reject, and costs a huge amount while being difficult to enforce (unless you're apple and want to lock down every part of your device hardware, and not allow your users to own their own phones/computers...) Go ahead, but it is competition which i'm betting you will lose.

"The answer to this is yes - but we don't live in a communist society." - i wasn't going to criticise you on this; i don't think it matter if you are a communist or not. But you're reasoning is flawed. We do live in a society where people think media should be free to consume. The Public Domain has legal standing already and is protected in some sense; and we have an intrinsic idea of what it means. Look at the type of society we really live in, rather

Netflix is a good alternative, reasonable price, and it is easy to use; infact it provides a higher quality product by keeping track of what episode you were on, and recommending other shows you might like... but until content producers choose to give up on the old distribtution models it will still lack in content.

Movies, well i could care less about big budget holywood movies; we might even be better off without them. A corrupt industry nobody needs to earn millions per film.

Pirate bay does not charge for content, it runs advertising to support the server costs. I don't know how much profit is in it or where it goes; but that is like complaining about google - they provide a free service supported by advertising; and you know what, it is other creators whose content they link to.

You don't have a problem with Google making a profit, do you? I mean they make huge profits but make literally none of the content they are linking to (apart from google products) The Pirate Bay doesn't host anything, they just link to it, similar to google.

(that said, google owns youtube, and apart from offering content for free, they have a profit sharing system to reward creators. They've actually promoting creativity without hurting anyone...)

What it comes down to is this: a service is worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

If your service is worse than torrenting, people will torrent - then you're not losing money, you're just offering a sub-par service. You can't blame the consumer for that. You don't deserve anyone's money.

'I spent hundreds of hours creating it - hours that I therefore did not spend flipping burgers, teaching people how to ski, or whatever you do to pay the bills'

So who cares? You can spend whatever hours you want creating something, that if your investment; your choice.

And tech has made it so i can watch/listen to hundreds of thousands of creators for free. So even if you *can* stop me from listening to your work; you shouldn't - you're losing a potential audience member by doing so. A possible revenue stream. Just as much as if you hadn't made the content in the first place.

@ Orathaic:

Apparently lots of people like to look at child porn.

Does that mean child porn ought to be legalised?

I have never bought an Against Me album. If I hadn't been able to download their music, I probably still wouldn't have bought an album of theirs. When they came to my city, I spent ~£50 on tickets, merch etc. That is money that they wouldn't have got had downloads not been a thing.

"The social norm should define the law not the other way round" I like the thought there - but I wonder how implementing such a practice would affect the social norm itself. Once people realise that majority rule truly exists how often would changing opinions force the law to change. If often then how would you administer justice in such a volatile system.

Let's say I'm a top end, popular, music artist (far from it of course). I create an album at a given cost and release it to sale, I also allow radio stations to play it for advertising. Some people but my music and share it (via copying to others) - I only really technically lose income if the people receiving a free copy would never have bought it in the first place.

However this was not the intent of the creation of my album - the intent (as told by the method of release - because there are free release mediums available) was to gain income - therefore free copies go against my right as the content creator. As a potential consumer I have no rights to listen to that music - I should pay for the privilege.

Some people here seem to believe that because they want to have content in their own time at their own cost points they have the right to - why?. It would be lovely if the whole world worked in that fashion but it doesn't - people have a right to charge for their content - they put the effort into it and in not actively giving it away for free they are choosing a particular path for it's distribution - nobody else has that right.

But that isn't the primary point - as orathaic alludes to above Pirate Bay did not host the content themselves - they provided links to it (as Google provides links to torrent sites themselves). A thin line perhaps when they were clearly aware of the majority of the content accessible via the torrents (and even named themselves 'Pirate' Bay), but nonetheless true.

If you don't like the price charged then don't purchase the content - yes I agree the prices for content can be ludicrously priced and we are being taken advantage of sometimes - and I empathise with most of the points here - but ignoring the reality of a situation because we just don't agree with it is non-productive. Time would be better spent thinking of positive ways to change the system.

@Jamiet99uk - not sure about where you live but viewing that sort of content isn't the expressed "social norm" where I come from.

"Does that mean child porn ought to be legalised?"

No, harm of others should not be legalized.

Ever.

Thanks for the strawman.

You have highligthed my point; you have yet to prove that copyright infringement harms anyone. It is not stealing despite your best efforts to suggest otehrwise.

"my right as the content creator"

- yes, your rights as established under copyright law. Which is not a human right, it is not a fundamental right as protected by the US constitution, like freedom of speech, of the fifth admentment. It is a right provided by a law which is outdated and flawed; which is supported by monopolistic corporations which have a vested interest in keeping it going.

They should not be determining our rights. Or you will see the right to privacy dissappearing pretty fast.

"As a potential consumer I have no rights to listen to that music - I should pay for the privilege."

Am i a potential customer is my budget for misc. entertainment is already spent? Or is negligible? Or do i infact have the right "...freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits." - As stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (article 27.1)

''A thin line perhaps when they were clearly aware of the majority of the content accessible via the torrents'' - the thin line is not thin when i'm arguing about pirate bay profiting from the service it provides.

I am seperately argueing that people should have a right to share culture. Public Domain. Ask for contributions to artististic endevaours. Pay for what they want to.

"Time would be better spent thinking of positive ways to change the system." - what like proving that a better economic model exists, and using it?

Yeah, that's what the pirate bay were* doing. They were even funding a political party to effect change.

*Disclaimer: I don't know about their recent activities, i've recently read an article from one of their founding members distancing himself from their current activities based on the drift from their founding principles.

Not being from the US I won't make a comment on the US Constitution - I will say that I agree copyright law is outdated in respect to the 'digital age' though and in dire need of updating. And I agree that corporations should not determine individual rights - my point was more to do with - if I wanted my music to be free (as the artist - not the label) then I would simply release it stating as such.

I can see the argument stemming from the reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 27.1). However libraries provide the function to "freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts" by offering loan of movies, music, literature etc - some even allow you areas to listen and enjoy in their facilities. Music shops have long been areas where music can be freely listened to.
I can see that part of a counter argument here could be that it is not "free" because the choice of where you consume the content is not yours. However following the principle above should not music, dvd players and tv's etc be free to truly allow free participation?


"the thin line is not thin when i'm arguing about pirate bay profiting from the service it provides." I don't think I disagreed wholly with you hear - I did say that they were aware of the content they were linking to - my point was more that they didn't choose the content explicitly (although it does appear they may have been complicit.

"I am seperately argueing that people should have a right to share culture. Public Domain. Ask for contributions to artististic endevaours. Pay for what they want to."
I think I have heard of a case of that happening before actually, successfully as well - I don't have a citation though - anyone?

"Yeah, that's what the pirate bay were* doing. They were even funding a political party to effect change."
- Perhaps I should have said "new positive ways to change the system." I'm not saying they were wrong to try - quite the opposite - but when something doesn't work you can always try something else and keep pushing until you have exhausted all possibilities or you win. The political parties established (e.g. Pirates without Borders - did not do too well in polling - not sure if this shows an widespread voter apathy/ignorance of the issues in this thread - but I don't know of a party supporting such policies that is widely successful. very willing to hear of one if it exists).

By the way orathaic - I fully support your earlier comments on Netflix.

These mediums are definitely the way forward from my current point of view

"However following the principle above should not music, dvd players and tv's etc be free to truly allow free participation?"

The principle above is widely open to interpretation. But it is a fundamental human right; and i'm yet to see similar claim being made about copyright.

Though the conversation above clearly refers to it as a right, many times. This is again use of words to make it seem like copyright infringement is wrong. Much like calling it theft - when it is clearly not at all theft.

@ANimac: and netflix will reach a much wider audience than torrenting (because it is easier) despite the charge.

People aren't against paying for content, if you provide them with a way.

Amanda Palmer is doing that now by asking, by setting up a kickstarter campaign, and she meets her fans in person (some of whom used to give her cash because they felt abd about downloading her album... and also because they know she hated her recording label)

"This is again use of words to make it seem like copyright infringement is wrong"

I believe I was just extending the point. If content provision should be charged at consumer discretion then surely the technology to access it should be, if free cultural participation is to be gained.

Please don't read implication into my words, I am being quite explicit in my view and this is a genuine point of discussion.

Jamie - If there was a universal basic income in place, would this change you stance on this issue?

How is this not different from stealing?

If I am selling cars, and some guy can't afford it, and wouldn't buy it if he couldn't get it for free, he can just take it from me? Somehow, I am not "losing" profit, because he never would have paid for it.