Icecream wrote:

And if the publisher says the book is rubbish and doesn't pay Rowling, there is no contract to sue them under. They can still publish it, because there's no copyright law. (Not that they'd want to, because people'll just download it for free).

I meant that the publisher would have to sign a contract in order to read the book (or maybe just the first chapter). Rowling doesn't permit them to read the book  unless they first sign a contract promising they pay some fixed amount (or percentage share of profits) if they decide to publish. Maybe she just writes one chapter and is then employed by the publisher on the basis of her writing skill.


I have a bunch more to write, but I'm pretty sleepy now...

Last edited by nadiatims (2012 January 24, 10:23 am)

kitakitsune wrote:

So how does it follow that slow distribution of anime equals a free pass to steal it instead?

It doesn't. I'm not trying to have moralistic argument here. I am an artist, and a pirate... I'm also a pragmatist and I think both sides' arguments are a bit ridiculous.

The entertainment industry has and will continue to make oodles of money and refuse to share much other than crumbs with the poor artists they claim are being victimized here. These people are just greedy and are fighting over the last 5% of their income.

The pro-piracy side meanwhile is busy coming up with all of these ridiculous arguments to justify theft. Piracy is dark shit...but also a relatively minor transgression. This is the world we live in, it's fine... There are much worse things that we all do on a daily basis. Hurting a loved one in an argument is much worse in my opinion than watching stolen anime.

The point of my previous post though was that the defensiveness of the pro-piracy (/pro-free speech on the Internet [give me a break] ) side stems from an insecurity that the Internet will change some day in the future, and become less open. Short of a totalitarian information bureau like China's, that is impossible and this entire debate is moot.

Last edited by dtcamero (2012 January 24, 7:18 pm)

I came across this audio where Neil Gaiman talks a bit about piracy. I think people where talking about something similar to this when they said that piracy is not all bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl … Qkyt1wXNlI

When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.

And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent

I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”

What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.

nadiatims wrote:

Icecream wrote:

And if the publisher says the book is rubbish and doesn't pay Rowling, there is no contract to sue them under. They can still publish it, because there's no copyright law. (Not that they'd want to, because people'll just download it for free).

I meant that the publisher would have to sign a contract in order to read the book (or maybe just the first chapter). Rowling doesn't permit them to read the book  unless they first sign a contract promising they pay some fixed amount (or percentage share of profits) if they decide to publish. Maybe she just writes one chapter and is then employed by the publisher on the basis of her writing skill.

But why would these publishers pay Rowling for her work if they couldn't make any money off of it themselves?

Neil Gaiman makes some good points, but I think there are two factors contributing to his observations, one of which will probably go away before long, and the other which could cease to exist if we eliminated copyright:

1. He's able to sell hardcover books because there are still a lot of people reading physical books and a lot of remaining nostalgia for physical books.  I think that's going to rapidly fade in the near future and we're already starting to see that happen.
2. With copyright laws still in place, pirates still have to maintain some degree of clandestinity, making it harder to find pirated books.  If we opened up the floodgates completely, I think that would change considerably.

Of course, there are still people who would buy the book out of loyalty to the author, but I hesitate to think it would be as much as some people think.


This isn't related to the current copyright discussion, but I thought it was an interesting observation:
http://verydemotivational.memebase.com/ … g-michael/

I'm not for the abolishing of copyright (though I wouldn't miss it), but it should be seriously weakened to about 10-15 years, not life+75. This goes for patents too.
10-15 years is plenty of time for creatives to make money on their creation. There should be no expectation to earn money for the rest of your and your children's lives without creating new stuff.

Life+75 seriously and demonstrably works against the betterment of the arts, which was the whole point of copyright in the first place.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2012 January 25, 3:56 am)

nadiatims wrote:

They can though. They get to be first to market, they could have the books in stores across 25 different countries at a price people are happy to pay for before anyone is able to pirate it.

How many copies can anyone reasonably expect to sell when there's unlimited free duplication over the internet?  What's to stop anyone from (legally) creating a giant Harry Potter fan club that pools about $0.001 per person to buy one copy of the book and distribute it to all of its members on release day?  Do you really think the ~1 year of work that J.K. Rowling put into a volume of that book is worth $30?

Maybe if people aren't willing to pay a lot for 'creative' works that is a reflection of supply/demand.

This is a ridiculous statement. People are willing to pay the requested prices for creative works and that is reflected in their sales.  Almost nobody is going to pay for something they can legally get for free, be it books, t-shirts, or coffee. Supply/demand is the balance of how cheaply the supplier is willing to sell their products vs. how much people are willing to pay for it.  You're only taking the latter into account.

Why should we effectively be subsidizing the writing of say Harry Potter (by artificially granting it protecting it from competition and inflating its value) at the expense of other industries?

Since this seems to be your main beef, could you give us some statistics on how much tax money is spent policing copyright infringement?  Aside from large takedowns like the Megaupload sting, I would think there's very little of it taking place.  Most of what I see is copyright owners doing their own policing and submitting stop orders to content distributors when they find an infraction. No government involvement there. Meanwhile the government is pouring billions into subsidising the farming industry and inflating prices by paying farmers to not grow crops, so it's funny you mention farming as something that needs more government money.

Last edited by JimmySeal (2012 January 25, 5:40 am)

Icecream wrote:

How come you're repeating the same argument without answering the counterarguments given to this?

well it's kind of hard to respond to everything when it's just me. But let me attempt to.

Icecream wrote:

What possible good does it do to have a product compete with itself? Creative works should compete against each other. Giving a product copyright doesn't artificially grant it protection from competition with other creative products it grants it protection from competition with itself.

How about we apply that to other products too. Farmer A grows apples, therefore farmer B must grow oranges, because having competitors supply the same product is bad for consumers right? Beside you could significantly alter Harry Potter and still get sued, suppose you try to compete by offering the same story with an alternate ending, or set in china instead of UK.

Icecream wrote:

Certainly, if people aren't willing to pay the price being charged by publishing companies -which is exactly the case with some creative products- the price should come down.

It will come down but this is irrelevant.

Icecream wrote:

However, the free copying and distribution of creative products creates a distortion in the market as to how much people do pay for things (rather than how much they would be willing to pay for things were that not happening), and it becomes very difficult to measure what the true demand is.

You're getting this all backward. IP laws distort the market by jacking up the price of duplicates and reducing the value of an idea at the point of creation. This is a distortion of the natural market, because devoid of copyright enforcement, people have always been free to emulate that which they witness through their senses. And people with good ideas are free to keep them secret, sell them, or get paid to generate them, but only once. Suppose we all had the ability duplicate objects. Do we still have to pay farmer B every time we want an orange...?

Icecream wrote:

Suppose there's a town that produces Levi jeans. A large group of citizens riot in the town and take over the jeans factory, and decide they'll give away all the jeans for free. People from all over come and get a pair of jeans, and meanwhile the shops in the surrounding areas end up not being able to sell many of their Levi's any more.
Would that be an accurate reflection of the demand for Levi's??
What's more, because there's free distribution of Levi's, the sale of Wranglers goes down. Is that an accurate reflection of the demand for Wranglers?

That would cause a temporary dip in the demand for jeans until the factory went out of business then the demand would increase again. I guess you're talking about what would happen if the rioters would be a constant force, well in that case you're basically describing socialism which is unsustainable and leads to economic collapse. The problem with this analogy though is that physical property and intellectual property are not the same. Physical property is scarce (you can't duplicate an orange) but non-new ideas aren't. Even without IP, new ideas have economic value, it just can't be sold under the current copyright model unless unforced under the threat of violence.

nadiatims wrote:

Icecream wrote:

What possible good does it do to have a product compete with itself? Creative works should compete against each other. Giving a product copyright doesn't artificially grant it protection from competition with other creative products it grants it protection from competition with itself.

How about we apply that to other products too. Farmer A grows apples, therefore farmer B must grow oranges, because having competitors supply the same product is bad for consumers right? Beside you could significantly alter Harry Potter and still get sued, suppose you try to compete by offering the same story with an alternate ending, or set in china instead of UK.

Yeah, well i'd easily agree that copyright is too tight on stuff like that. I don't really care if someone takes an idea from someone elses work and creates something new from it... though i think it really should be significantly different from the original. If someone took the Harry Potter books and simply changed all the names of places and people and resold it as their own work, that's clearly just stealing. They haven't put significant labour into doing that.

But in general, we were talking about direct duplication of the original right? i.e. something that doesn't add any value to the product at all.

As for Farmer B, well, it makes no sense to flood the market with Apples when there's demand for Oranges. But he's welcome to grow a different type of apple that'll appeal to a different sector of the apple market. But like you said, it's difficult to apply the argument properly in physical terms, because Farmer B would be growing his own apples in any case, not taking Farmer A's apples and selling them or giving them away without permission.

nadiatims wrote:

Icecream wrote:

However, the free copying and distribution of creative products creates a distortion in the market as to how much people do pay for things (rather than how much they would be willing to pay for things were that not happening), and it becomes very difficult to measure what the true demand is.

You're getting this all backward. IP laws distort the market by jacking up the price of duplicates and reducing the value of an idea at the point of creation. This is a distortion of the natural market, because devoid of copyright enforcement, people have always been free to emulate that which they witness through their senses. And people with good ideas are free to keep them secret, sell them, or get paid to generate them, but only once. Suppose we all had the ability duplicate objects. Do we still have to pay farmer B every time we want an orange...?

nadiatims wrote:

Icecream wrote:

Suppose there's a town that produces Levi jeans. A large group of citizens riot in the town and take over the jeans factory, and decide they'll give away all the jeans for free. People from all over come and get a pair of jeans, and meanwhile the shops in the surrounding areas end up not being able to sell many of their Levi's any more.
Would that be an accurate reflection of the demand for Levi's??
What's more, because there's free distribution of Levi's, the sale of Wranglers goes down. Is that an accurate reflection of the demand for Wranglers?

That would cause a temporary dip in the demand for jeans until the factory went out of business then the demand would increase again. I guess you're talking about what would happen if the rioters would be a constant force, well in that case you're basically describing socialism which is unsustainable and leads to economic collapse. The problem with this analogy though is that physical property and intellectual property are not the same. Physical property is scarce (you can't duplicate an orange) but non-new ideas aren't. Even without IP, new ideas have economic value, it just can't be sold under the current copyright model unless unforced under the threat of violence.

Again, i think you're undervaluing the act of creating a creative product. They aren't the same as "ideas", which can be thought up multiple times by different people. You can't sell an "idea for a fiction book" for instance. Both of us could have the idea for a book about a talking cat who takes over the neighbourhood for example, but it's impossible for us to come out with the same finished work.

Again, no amount of digital copies of the original makes it a "non-scarce idea". I think you're conceiving of what makes a "new idea" in the totally wrong way, which is leading to a unjustified perception of copyright.
How many George Orwell novels are there? Each different George Orwell novel represents a "new idea". It doesn't matter how many copies of each individual novel there are, the fact is that the ideas that have come from George Orwell to make up each novel are excruciatingly scarce.

A copy of an original creative work adds no value to the product... we're still reliant on George Orwell for a "new idea" if we consider his work valuable. And if we consider his work valuable, we should pay for it, precisely because his "ideas" (novels) are scarce, no matter how many copies of each one there might be.

(^^Am i writing this clearly? I don't know exactly how to express this best.)

Your way of conceiving of scarcity seems to be fallacious, because you aren't measuring scarcity in the same way across both physical products and creative products.
In the physical product's case, you're considering scarcity by it's physical properties for it's production, but in the case of the creative products, you're conceiving of scarcity not as a factor of production but as the copy of the end result itself.

Supposing that duplicating objects physically became totally free... well, thats the end of capitalism, isn't it. But even then, we'd probably want to find another system to reward good quality products vs. bad quality ones.

It's possible that a different system of compensation would be better for creative products now the original can be duplicated at no cost, but it would again have to be an alternative system to a traditional capitalist model, and i doubt you'd agree to it. For instance, making all creative products free and paying their creators by online demand recognition systems through taxation. That's the only alternative i can really think of that would fairly reward creators while the rest of the products in the world still run by the traditional capitalist system. Because we still need to reward the creators for making good or bad quality work, and for the labour time and other costs that go into making high quality creative products. A simple 1st on the market principle isn't going to do that efficiently, i think, and as i argued above, doesn't reflect the actual scarcity, or actual demand for high quality original works.

Last edited by IceCream (2012 January 25, 8:49 am)

nadiatims wrote:

A. that's more effort than its worth (especially if you want a nicely printed copy) if the publishers just release the book at a price more in line with a single copy's actual production cost.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. A few years from now, I don't think many people will have all that much interest in getting a nicely printed copy if they can get a digital copy for free.

B. Rowling wouldn't allow the book to be published if she could reasonably determine its market value to be more than $30. She'd sell it to a publisher for a lump sum, and her negotiating power would be determined by the perceived market value of the work based on the preview chapter or prior success as an author or something.

Right - but if any new book on the market only has the prospect of selling a few dozen copies thanks to unrestricted copying, why would any publishing company want to pay her more than 30 dollars?  As I've already said, people 10 years from now probably won't have all that much interest in having physical copies of their books, and a free copy of a popular series would be all over the net within hours of its release.


As I've already pointed out, you're really obscuring the argument by grouping everything under this vague umbrella of "ideas."  Do we have to debate copyright and patent law at the same time? You're the only one who seems to be trying to do that, and they're not the same thing.
A book or a musical recording is not just an "idea."  It is the outcome of actual time, money, and work, no different from the apples that the your farmers are growing.  You claiming that you are entitled to receive and duplicate the fruits of an artist's labor for free just because it can be duplicated easily is the height of arrogance.  Yes, physical books and gigabytes have no ostensible scarcity, but artistic works, and the effort that goes into them, do.

Last edited by JimmySeal (2012 January 25, 10:42 am)

yudantaiteki wrote:

(And as a side note, in terms of strategies outside the criminal and civil courts, the companies should always be targeting the more casual pirates who are drawn to piracy for reasons other than simply saving money.  You can import a Japanese DS game for $60+, or download the game to your R4 and have it before it's even on sale in Japan, in a form that lets you carry around multiple games at once on one card, and allows backing up of your save files to a computer for safekeeping.  This points to a problem that goes beyond simply "people are freeloaders who want free stuff."

This hits pretty close to something else I have heard many people mention before. Pirated copies of games are usually vastly SUPERIOR to the actual release. Why? Because most games are laden with DRM trying to beat out the pirates. Except that it doesn't stop them and usually tends to make the life of customers, who legitimately bought the game, miserable. I have heard of people buying a game, not being able to get it to run on their system and then turning around and downloading it off Pirate Bay because the DRM is stripped out and it actually works.

vonPeterhof wrote:

First of all I would like to apologize to nadiatims for abstaining from participation in this debate while agreeing with almost everything she has said

So there are two people who want to eliminate 90% of art and literature.

vonPeterhof wrote:

Here's a fairly detailed article where he outlines his general view of IP and spells out his points of disagreement with Rothbard.

I have skimmed the article and will say that much of the logic in the article makes sense. The article attacks the concepts surrounding the justification for IP law and protection. Which again, many of the arguments posed were valid I think, however I saw no real solutions mentioned. But I guess if you are hard line libertarian there isn't a solution, its simply "No government, No Laws."

A judicial system that is devoid of IP laws and leaves the system open for any work to be copied in mass, is looking to be a society devoid of many new artistic creations. The only people that would create are people doing it as a hobby; not only that but the quality of the creative works are likely to be far worse than what you expect these days. Some people think this is how it should be, but the majority would see this as a return to the Dark Ages. The advancement of technology and the birth of the digital era simply don't make it possible for society to function in the same way IP functioned 500 years ago.

Stuff costs money. Some of that stuff even includes food, water, and shelter; which people require to survive. Unless you are producing all these materials on your own (farming/hunting), you are bartering or trading in currency. Put another way you are trading the products of your time expended for the products of some other person's products of time spent. If an author suddenly can't expect to be able to sell a book he spends 5 hours each day for an entire year writing, because people will simply take the book and copy it and redistribute it for free. Then the author won't be able to survive performing such a task and instead will have to find another line of work. Maybe he still writes, but now he only spends an hour each day writing and now suddenly the book takes 5 years to release. Books are easy examples to make; lets not even start talking about Hollywood movies.

So you see, yes, IP law has glaring problems with general abstract theory, but by eliminating it you are basically relegating the artistic/creative side of society back to the Middle Ages.

Last edited by vix86 (2012 January 26, 4:06 am)