Nihil Obstat Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='arfink' timestamp='1349830357' post='2491794'] KnightofChrist- I also do graphics for a living, but I am a big proponent of the Creative Commons way of licensing art. Perhaps I am silly or lacking in business acumen, but to me it seems pointless and frivolous to Copyright my works merely to protect my income. Those who wish to pirate my work will always be able to do so, and it will only continue to get easier. I must adapt in a different way. IMO, it's far better to use a permissive license like Creative Commons and hope to garner more good feeling and have attention and attribution reflected back at me. [/quote] Here is a guy who can read how markets change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winchester Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 Kinsella is a rock star. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arfink Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 I should clarify my reasoning about copyright here. To me the only advantage I get by copyrighting my works is the ability to take punitive action against the unauthorised distribution of my works. However, as a very new and small artist, it's actually not in my interest to prevent the dissemination of my works in any way. By claiming a copyright I encourage those who wish to spread my works to do so without my knowledge and consent. If I use a permissive license, however, it is more likely that those who value and appreciate my work enough to "steal" it may do so in a way that will be beneficial to me, in essence doing my outreach and marketing for me. I am no expert and certainly have not got many years of experience with this, but it seems to work well enough for me. I have an enthusiastic audience and the occasional commission come out of this kind of work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KnightofChrist Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='arfink' timestamp='1349830357' post='2491794'] KnightofChrist- I also do graphics for a living, but I am a big proponent of the Creative Commons way of licensing art. Perhaps I am silly or lacking in business acumen, but to me it seems pointless and frivolous to Copyright my works merely to protect my income. Those who wish to pirate my work will always be able to do so, and it will only continue to get easier. I must adapt in a different way. IMO, it's far better to use a permissive license like Creative Commons and hope to garner more good feeling and have attention and attribution reflected back at me. [/quote] Creative Commons is fine, if you give permission great. But for others copyright is better for them. The deeper moral issue I have is whether or not someone who takes or copys IP commits theft. It seems a novel idea that it is not theft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nihil Obstat Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='KnightofChrist' timestamp='1349831850' post='2491801'] Creative Commons is fine, if you give permission great. But for others copyright is better for them. The deeper moral issue I have is whether or not someone who takes or copys IP commits theft. It seems a novel idea that it is not theft. [/quote] Copyright itself is rather novel in the history of the justice system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arfink Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 Well, I never could quite get my head around how copying is actually theft. If I draw a picture and photograph it and put it on the internet and someone else retransmits it, I have lost nothing. Nothing has been taken from me. There is no loss. The original is here on my desk. If I did the work entirely digitally then the original is on my hard drive. Now of course, the common counter argument is, I could have copied it myself and sold the copy. Or sold the ability to copy it to someone else. But now we're speculating about an imagined loss. My analogy to support this is as follows: I run an art gallery. I have paintings hung up with price tags on them. People can pay me the price I ask, and I'll make them a photocopy, or let them take a photograph. But what of the people who wander into my gallery and just look at them? They have a "copy" in their head. Would I be allowed to sue someone who had a photographic memory? I don't think so. Ultimately, whether it is theft or not, the ease with which anything can be copied means that it is at least very foolish to base a business model off the presumption that I can control who copies my work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4588686 Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='KnightofChrist' timestamp='1349822799' post='2491743'] Yes my questions are bias. The arco way of thinking of intellectual property would seem to attack my livelihood. [/quote] STTOOPPPPPP ITTTTTT 'Anarco'-capitalists are not anarchists. I mean, they have a right to call themselves whatever they want, and I'm not saying that their misappropriation of the anarchist label is in itself a discrediting fact, but they do not come out of the anarchist intellectual tradition (a tradition which considers private property a form of theft) and almost no anarchists recognize them as anarchists. Anarchism as an intellectual tradition has never just been about destroying public power systems and methods of coercion by public institutions so that private power systems and methods of coercion by private institutions can fill their place. North American extreme libertarians have their own intellectual tradition. And it is a respectable one. But it is different from the anarchist tradition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KnightofChrist Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 How about IP that is more complex than a image? Like the original topic, software, with lines and lines of code that takes many hours, weeks, months to create. Photoshop for example or a PS3 game. Say I go to the store buy the disk take it home clone it share it with millions of people then return the disk and get my money back. Is this theft? Is using pirated software theft or at least immoral? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4588686 Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 (edited) It's actually a pretty ironic misappropriation of the title since actual anarchist partisans were dying in the fight against the fascist regimes that individuals like Ludwig Von Mises wrote about approvingly as a necessary evil in the fight against communism. Flame bait!!! Edited October 10, 2012 by Hasan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winchester Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1349835219' post='2491823'] It's actually a pretty ironic misappropriation of the title since actual anarchist partisans were dying in the fight against the fascist regimes that individuals like Ludwig Von Mises wrote about approvingly as a necessary evil in the fight against communism. Flame bait!!! [/quote] Mises wasn't an anarchist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4588686 Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='Winchester' timestamp='1349835373' post='2491827'] Mises wasn't an anarchist. [/quote] Right. But he and Heyek are major figures in the libertarian intellectual tradition that feeds into anarco-capitalism. Libertarianism [i][color=#666666][font=verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif][size=3]It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.[/size][/font][/color][/i] Anarchism [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQDqLpeNZJg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQDqLpeNZJg[/url] I am being flame baitish but not totally. Mises comments about fascism doesn't somehow prove that American libertarianism is really a disguised apology for fascism. But the two groups, North American Libertarianism and Anarchism, have very different values and paradigms and I think the different takes on fascism and labor unions does illustrate those different values. As Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winchester Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='KnightofChrist' timestamp='1349835016' post='2491821'] How about IP that is more complex than a image? Like the original topic, software, with lines and lines of code that takes many hours, weeks, months to create. Photoshop for example or a PS3 game. Say I go to the store buy the disk take it home clone it share it with millions of people then return the disk and get my money back. Is this theft? Is using pirated software theft or at least immoral? [/quote] If one views the copyright as a contract between purchaser (or renter) as an agreement to not copy, then yes. However, the current system is a bestowal of monopoly by a third party. I tend to avoid piracy due to ethical concerns, and the recognition that our system has co-opted the proper method of securing copyright. We haven't even begun to discuss patents, of course. The central question is what may be owned. Can you truly own an idea? It's not scarce or rivalrous. I can use your idea, and your use of it is not diminished. You might face competition on the market, meaning reduced sales and certainly reduced profit in the battle of lowering prices. But that would be true if I used your design to make my own copy for my own use. Or if I used the design to make copies fro my friends. If you invented a toaster design and I copied it for my own use, would you argue that I had stolen from you? What if I came to the same design on my own? Or did not vary the design enough to satisfy patent laws? What if you designed a toaster and I designed a toaster along the same lines, but I arrived at the patent office earlier. Is it just that you should not then be able to use the design you came up with on your own because I obtained the patent first? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arfink Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 According to section 2408 of the CCC, theft is "usurping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner." In fact, let me just put the whole thing here: [indent=1]The seventh commandment forbids [i]theft[/i], that is, usurping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.[/indent] In the case of duplicating computer software, I think we can agree that it would be against the will of the owner, but in many instances I am not sure that the will of the owner is reasonable. I am thinking of overtly manipulative and abusive EULAS and "magnetic" service clauses, as well as the notion that the property is not transferred upon sale, which IMO is completely unreasonable and constitutes theft of the part of the IP "owner" against the purchaser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vincent Vega Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='Slappo' timestamp='1349824324' post='2491759'] My question would be this: If you oppose the idea of intellectual property, how do you propose artists (music or otherwise) make profit off of their work? [/quote] As a musician, I will answer this. As long as people have good taste, my salary is not threatened. If people would like to have canned music at their church services, such is life, but anyone with sense recognizes that that is not a realistic alternative to a flesh-and-blood organist (or accompanist of whatever kind). For that reason, performers are safe. As far as composers go, those who tend to nickel-and-dime in regards to copied music fall into two categories: publishers and hacks. The publishers are greedy for their own ends, and the hacks know that no one would pay for their music because it is bereft of value. Good composers make very little from music they've already published, the bulk of their income coming (as it has for hundreds and hundreds of years) from works commissioned by patrons. Good musicians, whether they are performers or composers, need not worry about making money off of their art. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LouisvilleFan Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 [quote name='Slappo' timestamp='1349824324' post='2491759'] My question would be this: If you oppose the idea of intellectual property, how do you propose artists (music or otherwise) make profit off of their work? [/quote] Here's an episode of the podcast EconTalk that discusses this question in the fashion industry: [b] [url="http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/06/blakely_on_fash.html"][size=4]Blakley on Fashion and Intellectual Property[/size][/url][/b] The link includes what they call "highlights," although it looks more like a complete transcript to me. So I reckon you can read it or listen to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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