nadiatims Wrote:JimmySeal Wrote:Firstly, if it's a patented watch design, no you can't legally make the exact same watch, but that's beside the point.
and don't you think thats completely ridiculous?
Not in the slightest. Inventors should have some assurance that they will be able to capitalize on their ideas and not have someone profiteer off their innovation and hard work a month after they release it to the world.
But as I already said, that's beside the point.
Quote:we passed laws allowing people to attempt to hold onto their ideas after letting them go (keep their cake and eat it too).
This makes no sense. The creative ideas behind an ephemeral artistic work such as a book or audio recording have no value if the creator keeps them to his or herself. They also have almost no value if the artist is only able to sell one copy of it before someone goes off and distributes it to everyone on the internet without restriction. It only has any real value when they are able to release it to the world and still hold the rights to indicate how it is distributed, so no this is not a case of having one's cake and eating it too.
People like you who spend $8 on a CD and think that gives them the right to give a copy to everyone they know are the ones who are trying to have their cake and eat it 100 times.
Quote:If you sell me a physical object it becomes my property, which I am free to do with as I like, including duplicating.
On what grounds are you making this claim?
Quote:Why should it be any different if you sell me a manuscript/a song or anything else?
Because the work that goes into an artistic work is an intangible commodity that extends far beyond the simple act of printing it. It only has any monetary value when there is control over how it is reused. The same is not true for a physical product like a car or television.
Quote:You pass it on, it becomes mine. If you forbid me to do with it as I please, you are imposing yourself on my property rights (eg. the rights to use my time/my paper/my printing press/whatever).
The paper and the ink are yours. The content belongs to someone else. You do not have a right to reproduce their intellectual property the same way you don't have a right to print counterfeit money. Artists have a right to have their intellectual property protected. Your rights are not the only ones in play here.
By spending $8 on a CD or book, you have not purchased the countless hours of work that went into producing it.
That is not yours to squander as you see fit. You have simply purchased the right to use that media in accordance with the copyright agreement.
Quote:If a writer (or anyone else for that matter) sells their ideas to someone on the agreement that they keep them secret and that person reveals it then they are breaking a contract (and can be pursued by the law), but a third party who finds the information somewhere never entered into any contract so they aren't doing anything wrong.
Thanks to copyright law, anyone who consumes a copyrighted work is implicitly entering a contract not to reproduce it without permission. If you don't like that, don't consume it.
Quote:The person who benefits from copyright laws obviously is the holder of the copyright, but they are able to externalise the cost of enforcement to the state, even though it provides zero benefit to the tax payer.
Copyright protects the artists who can expect some remuneration for the creation of a quality work, the publishers who pay the artists for the right to produce and distribute it, and the consumers who can enjoy quality work thanks to the protection provided by copyright. Copyright provides a very real benefit to nearly all taxpayers.
Quote:Copyright an IP laws never even existed before 1709.
What's your point? A lot of laws didn't exist before 1709.
I asked a very pertinent question in my last post which you did not answer, so I will ask it more precisely this time:
How would you propose that writers and musicians receive any benefit from their written works and recordings if they can only sell one copy before it's reproduced ad infinitum without any benefit to the person who produced it?
Edited: 2012-01-22, 6:27 pm
I imagine (or I'd hope) a lot of people will be turned off by their worsening reputation enough to stop buying their products if this goes on.
