Philosophical Quandry: Piracy

[geoschmo]

Tesco, I think the idea is that you can't patent the idea for a train, but you can patent a specific type of train locamotive, or at least some parts of it that are unique and your own design. You can't patent a steam engine after all. Patenting has benifits to soceity in that it encourages research and inovation, which can have some pretty substantial up front costs. But like copyright it can be taken to non-productive extremes.

I don't have a problem with you 5 year, 20 year terms. I think that is probably a bit long for software, but it would probably work for books. But I do have a question about what is commercial and what is non-commercial. If my friend buys a copy of SE4 and I burn a copy so I don't have to pay for it, is that a commercial or non commercial use?

Geoschmo

[ July 16, 2003, 18:42: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by tesco samoa:
pvk they should have people on everystreet cornor watching out for people who jay walk and ticket them.

It is as equally morally wrong. And all laws should be equally enforced

The UK is also full of surveillance video cameras, even worse than the US is getting. Big Brother is watching you, and his local governments are counting on ticket revenues from people who forget their seatbelts, or for not having a registration sticker on their license plate, or who drive a high-performance car 5 mph over a pointless speed limit where the bus routinely drives 10-15 mph over.

PvK

[Erax]

Patents were created to allow inventors to benefit from the fruit of their creative work, while allowing their knowledge to be released to the public. Scientific knowledge must be shared to benefit society as a whole, but those who provide such knowledge must be compensated for it. Otherwise they would use their knowledge for themselves only, creating a series of technology-based secret societies.

So how is this different from books or music ? Well, entertainment content has no value unless it is shared, it can't really be hoarded for one's own benefit.

As for trademarks, they embody the 'brand value' that a name holds. If you market anything at all with the name 'Star Wars' on it, you know it will attract millions of fans, some of which may actually buy the product. The brand name adds value to your product, and you must compensate Lucasfilm for it.

Now I know very little about actual trademark legislation, other than that they have no expiration date. However, I feel they should work like mining rights : if you don't exploit them over a given period of time, you lose them.

[tesco samoa]

geo you can patient the idea for a train.... There are companies that just patient ideas and only ideas. Major corp's push this all the time.

You no longer have to beat someone to producing a product people like and purchase. You just have to beat the company who builds it by only coming up with a concept and prooving it in court.... That is it.

And the copy would fall under non commerical use. Commerical use would be for another company / person to use the code and sell it for profit...

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by tesco samoa:
And the copy would fall under non commerical use. Commerical use would be for another company / person to use the code and sell it for profit...

So copying a game to sell it to make money is commercial use and wrong, but copying the game for personal use to simply avoid paying the purchase price is non-commercial and is ok? That makes no sense to me.

From the perspective of the author of the work what is the difference if another company makes a million copies and sells them without compensating him, or if a million people all make one copy without compensating him. Either way that is one million copies he doesn't get paid for.

As to your other point I will plead ignorance. I have never heard of a company patenting an idea the way you are describing it. In fact to my knokwledge you have to have some sort of diagram to get a patent. How do you diagram an idea?

Geoschmo

[PvK]

I entirely agree that it would be a big help to restore copyrights to 5-20 year limits.

However, it doesn't really address piracy before that period is up. It would help in the case of things like business applications software. I actually prefer 5-year old Versions of MS Office, for example, because it lacks the overblown crud and unwanted features.

Of course, existing megacorps will fight this tooth and nail, since it will make many of their products even less appealing than they currently are.

There are certain things which technology has made trivial and easy, which society's obsolete conceptions are keeping us from using. The longer humans take to realize this, the more sad we are. Some people seem to take capitalism as a moral principle, but for some things, thanks to technology, it wouldn't really need to be relevant any more except through the oppression of corporations and governments. Is it really a good thing for most of the population to feel that they must spend most of their time and energy doing work that they don't enjoy, or face homelessness and hunger (not to mention reduced access to entertainment media) even if there is plenty for everyone, even if thanks to technology, only the people who enjoy working in construction and food production do so? Is it good that when technology makes certain professions unneeded, that the corporations get all the benefits, while the obsolete workers get nothing but a sudden need to find new careers, or go homeless?

Some people seem to think that my idea for compensating digital content creators is unrealistic. Under the current system, many people develop computer games for corporations. For a major title, most of the money goes to Wal-Death and other chain retail stores, some goes to other vendors, the publisher makes or loses depending on how well the mass market responded, and the actual developers generally get a small slice. If games were distributed essentially for free over the net, then most of the money the public pays to the retail/distribution/publisher etc engines doesn't exist. If the public paid an agency for the right to all media in a catalog (which ideally, would be most/all media, in my opinion), much less would be needed to support the same amount of content.

Some have objected to the idea of paying for unwanted or disapproved content, but it seems like they've missed (dismissed?) the part about people being able to indicate which works and creators they appreciate (equally, they could say which ones they disapprove), and this would determine the amount of compensation.

This is not an abandonment of free enterprise, but a further liberation of enterprise and artistry from the yoke of megacorporations and the threat of starvation for struggling artists.

PvK

[geoschmo]

Pvk, how do you determine who qualifies as an artist/author able to receive the "stipend" you talked about? What's to stop everyone form declaring themselves an artist and getting a free check even if they produce nothing worthwhile?

Geoschmo