Only in recent times. That is a relatively new change to the way copyright infringement is handled. You are dishonest if you claim that copyright infringement has always been a criminal matter. Copyright law has existed in this nation since 1790. I wonder why infringement only became criminal within the past 15 years or so, if it has always been a crime? Please explain.


Indeed, because it served us just fine for the first 200+ years of copyright law in this nation. I see no need for government (aka taxpayers) to foot the bill now (which is the real magic behind making it criminal).

Times have changed and so has technology. That is why laws have evolved. There was no way that we could have foreseen music and movies being transfered digitally from one person to another in seconds 50 years ago.

I just think it's absurd that you want to make the theft of something criminal because you can hold it in your hand but civil if it can't be held in your hand. Just doesn't work in this day in age.

Wonder why that was the case for 200+ years then? I understand the changes in the world, but if it should have always been criminal, why wasn't it?

So if someone logs into your bank account online and steals your money, it should be handled in civil court, right?

No, but I guarantee it won't be called copyright infringement and it won't be a situation where it was a civil issue for 200+ years. You are totally awesome at completely distorting the real issue.

Slavery was also a civil issue 200 years ago and had been one across the globe for centuries. The argument that just because something was treated a certain way 200 years ago it should be treated the same now is absurd. Especially when you consider the massive technological advances we've seen.

Not everyone wants to live under the same laws we had in the 1800's.

Music may be a touchier area for some folks because there is no tech support, etc (it's much like how people used to record songs from radio on to tape). Video games certainly lead to direct stealing when I talk about tech support and generating a "buggy" reputation from pre-release stolen builds.

When we talk about tech, one key difference is the ability to produce "perfect" copies in the modern age. It used to be that each analog-produced copy was worse quality than the original, but in the age of digital no quality need be lost. That has made a difference as well. Books used to be expensive to make copies of, now it's dirt cheap.

I do not know, but are you claiming that the vast majority of copyright infringement w/ music is in loss-less audio formats? If so, then it really could be a situation of perfect copies. If it isn't in a loss-less format, then there is definitely going to be degradation from the original.

Now the slavery comparison is made. Bravo. That has to do with human rights. Not exactly the same and you must know this in your heart (I hope).


Not 200 years ago, big guy. It wasn't even criminal 30 years ago. It wasn't even criminal 20 years ago. Doesn't mean you did not have the right to sue someone who violated your copyright, but they didn't go to jail for it.


Things change. You adapt to the new reality. You don't suddenly create new criminals. I know that isn't the way most people think, though.


Indeed.

So is your entire argument for being against criminalizing intellectual property theft is that the law was different from the 1800's up till a decade or so ago?

The Supreme Court would be thoroughly impressed with the argument.

Maybe even as impressed as I am with your strawman parade.

Funny, Rain, your courts and the US Courts don't seem to agree....

Groklaw - Judge Tells RIAA Attorney: "Stop Using Abusive Language, Like Calling File Sharing 'Piracy'"

From the Judge

"Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new. And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it 'theft.' You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language."

We were discussing whether stealing intellectual property is considered theft, not file sharing. The judge in that case ruled that the file sharing had legitimate legal uses and was talking specifically about that.

But File Sharing IS stealing IP, I thought.. that's the argument you were trying to make before. Ergo, File Sharing=Theft to you.. but not at the least settled at the legal level (or if it is settled, that it is NOT)

Not at all. File sharing is a method of transferring files. It is often used to steal intellectual property, but that doesn't make it theft.

I'm open to the concept that "stealing" intellectual property could be criminal. What they commonly call "copyright infringement" is not the stealing of intellectual property, it is the unauthorized distribution of intellectual property. Not quite the same as stealing it outright so that the original owner doesn't even have it anymore.

Um, file sharing is perfectly legal. It is only if the information contained in the file is protected in some way that we have an issue. There is nothing inherently bad about file sharing. The internet is practically based on it.

You can't make any money off intellectual property if you don't control the rights to its distribution. It is a completely illogical argument to say that you are 'not stealing' anything because they still have the original 'copy'.

If you can't understand how it is a crime, imagine big giant corporations as the villains committing these acts. If you can say that giant RIAA, instead of paying artists, instead systematically copies their intellectual content and undercuts the price of the original artist (free distribution with ads)... and that you wouldn't have a problem with that, well at least you would be drinking your own kool aid.

For every imaginative writer, artist, or singer (not to mention inventor), there are probably 99 other mouth breathing morons in this world. Given how much of a pain it is already to get paid for creating something awesome, do you really want to undercut the entire capability of them to make a profit at all? If it comes down to a vote the mob will always select screw the minority, even if in the long run it means so many wonderful pieces of art will never see the light of day. That is why we have to have ethics, and develop and update laws to comply with them. Quit taking away an artist's rights just because a crowd is a selfish pile of jerks that are enjoying a grey area in between laws being redefined for a new age.

Edit: File sharing itself is not illegal. It merely is a form of communication. The legal issue is the ability to create entire copies (either perfect or with some loss). There are even exceptions for fair use so people can communicate about intellectual property without breaking the law, but there is a threshold for that so the original creator of the idea still has some profit incentive. Even compressed music does not meet that threshold, it is like changing the title to 'A' Lord of the Rings and occaisonally chopping a sentence here and there, still wrong!

I love that post with all my heart.

Theft of revenues, perhaps. Those are the damages.


What are you talking about? I've been advocating suing people/companies for violations the whole time. I suppose you may be talking about someone else, because I have never once said anybody gets a free ride here. If a big company were to do it, you sue them and take the money you would've made. Perhaps you've been drinking some other kind of kool aid.


If a violator of your copyright goes to jail, how much does that add to your bank account?


Were we not seeing any good art produced in the United States of America prior to the '90s? This is a relevant question because that is when copyright violation in itself finally became criminal. Good thing they finally came around and made copyright violation criminal, or we might never have amounted to squat.

This analogy seems weak. It would be much more like chopping off a few lines from the top and bottom of every page.

You seem to have a big hangup on whether it is civil or criminal court. I think in an ideal world where civil suits were easy and efficient, I might agree, but if the problem and scope is getting out of hand (as it clearly is), I think it is well within the government to consider it a matter of public policy to criminalize the behavior. I believe that is what occurred, it is not some magical overnight matter of "we want to imprison bootleggers".

Really to me this is really no different than how physical theft should be treated. You have your minor shoplifting treated as a misdemeanor, or you have your grand theft (say stealing revenues on 100,000 copies of a video game, what is that, three to five million, certainly a felony). Apparently, as a matter of promoting the public good, theft has been considered a matter for enforcement in the criminal courts... even though it could clearly be handled as a purely civil matter (in theory). So explain the difference, especially now that you've basically admitted that a theft is occurring (consider it a theft of cash as a parallel if a published work is too abstract to consider).

If the violator goes to jail, at the very least I can assume for some amount of time he is not going to be actively distributing my content. It also acts as a disincentive to performing the act again. It is a matter of the courts to assign reasonable punishments to convictions, and they can, and have, been challenged throughout our history. Also, I'm reasonably sure that conviction in a criminal court does not prevent seeking a lawsuit in civil court for damages.

Finally, there was plenty of great works created before the concept of copyright law was even considered. The problem for thieves was that replication of a statue, book, or other such work often was more difficult than just snatching the original. As reproduction of works becomes easier, laws have changed. If it takes criminal courts to stop piracy, I would prefer that over just saying content creators are screwed, and need to go to great lengths to protect their work in addition to its original creation.

A better analogy would be to take a copy of lord of the rings, and smudge the ink here and there, but such that it is still readable. Sure you are 'losing content' but not such to the point you are missing words or actions from the story. With the common compression there is these days, its hard to even call it truly lossy... you need to be a technician to understand how its any different (or have a good ear).

I'll start this off with the following disclaimer: I don't pirate games. The only music I've ever downloaded are songs I've bought at one point or another in my life and either had the physical copy stolen, lost, scratched to shit, or something else that keeps me from listening to it. I don't support it, but I know its the reality of today's market.

However, I do know quite a few people that pirate games for one reason or another. Some just do it because its free stuff. Some do it to give a game a serious try before buying. Some do it for a mix of the two reasons above. One friend I have does it because he lives in South Korea now and even though he would gladly pay for the games he plays, he's unable to in most cases. He can't use D2D, he can't use Steam, and he can't buy games from stores there because they're Korean copies.

The problem with the industries, and throughout this thread, is that there's a significant failure to adapt to the current market. You can stomp your feet, claim that whatever business model used is your right to choose, and complain when your shit gets pirated or you can adapt to the situation. Whether people like it or not, the public is who chooses whether or not your business model works. Whether it fails because your product sucks or because you made it easy for people to steal is really inconsiquential because, when it comes down to it, you failed.

Stardock is mentioned above because of the Demi-god disaster, but at the same time Stardock has embraced piracy and for a couple reasons. They have zero copy protection on their games because 1.) They've realized that out of the people that pirate their games a small percentage would probably still buy them if no pirated copies were available and you can write it off all you want, but word of mouth from the people that pirate does help sales and 2.) They want to treat their customers like paying customers instead of assuming everyone is going to steal their games. Yes, they got screwed over in this scenario, but I think even stardock would admit the word of mouth from playing thier games has helped them build a following.

Gabe Newell from Valve stated earlier this year that Valve treats pirates as paying customers. He said the trick is to find a business model that gives people a reason to buy their games rather than pirate them. If you look at Left for Dead, you can go online and download the single player game and its ok, but nothing special. Where Left for Dead shines is in its multiplayer gameplayer, which requires a purchased copy to play.

There are games out there now that advertise the fact that they don't use copy protection because they want their game on as many computers as possible. The puzzle quest games immediately come to mind here.

This thread actually gives a lot of insight as to why the industries refuse to change. People simply expect everyone to do things the way they want them to be done rather than changing the way they do things in order to maximize their profits.

I find it very interesting that copyright terms have been extended at the same time that enforcement of them has become so difficult that it has to be handed over to the government. It seems to me that the pendulum has swung too far. Not only do they get copyright terms that are longer than many will live to see, but they get criminal prosecutions to boot.


A bad choice of words by me. More like causing a loss of revenue, which is not the same thing as stealing it outright. I simply see copyright infringement as a end run around the typical distribution model. It would be more like a company that has a policy to only allow certain authorized dealers to peddle their product, and somebody else comes along and starts selling it (or even giving it away) without proper authorization. This, in itself, is not criminal. It is going to be a civil matter handled before a judge. Any involvement of law enforcement will likely be limited to the enforcement of a cease-and-desist order (once that order has been violated).


Of course you can still sue for damages. However, aren't you more likely to collect from someone who is not behind bars in a correctional facility? I understand the urge for more punitive measures to be in place. That merely having a chance to recover your lost revenue does not provide the emotional relief that watching somebody get taken away in an orange jumpsuit would.


Are content creators really screwed? Do we know this to be true? It is hard to find good data to support the positions of any side when it comes to this, because it appears to often be shaped to support whatever cause is being promoted. Perhaps you could point me to some trustworthy sources that could help me form a new view of this situation.


It depends on the kind of music you listen to. Many classical recordings that I have heard with the standard compression found in iTunes, for example, are hardly what the originals are. You lose the dynamic range required to really appreciate what some of these composers (and performers) were doing.

Compressed music certainly is worth more than nothing, but to declare it a perfect copy of the original is absurd.

I generally stay out of these threads, because I have a skewed view in most peoples eyes.

That being: If I am an artist and I paint a famous painting and then stand on the street corner handing out photo copies, can I be upset if someone copies and freely distributes one of my copies? To me this is what radio does and why I think many people have a disassociation with file downloading and theft.

A more interesting question to me is, what about the music that would never be purchased? An example "American Pie" (The Don McClean song not the movie) is an American classic and one I have a "pirated" copy of on my MP3 player, however would never in a million years have paid even $.99 for it(and I can assure you its not the only one), have I harmed anyone?

Secondly the thought that intellectual property is 90 or 80 or even 60% of a CD cost is ludicrous. To suggest so ignores hard material (CD, Jewel Case, and liner material and production), distribution (most would be shocked how significant this is), advertising and marketing, and other artist fees (cover art, producng, etc.) and RADIO PROMOTION..thats right you pay so they can give it away to others for free.

What if I buy a CD and then play it on a boom box on my dock at such a level that the entire lake can hear the music free of charge....have I unfairly distributed their music?
Would I be due a promotion and distribution fee?

I think the intellectual property argument is weak at best since MOST artists make 80% of their income off concert and merchandise sales, as a result it CAN be argued that pirates help promote the artist.

Do I download music? I have however I currently have no means of which to download it on my PC but wouldnt mind changing that.

Do I think its "wrong"? I guess on some level, yeah.

Is it the business of the gov't? HELL NO!

A better way to put it is it gets copied once into a lossy format, but additional copies are perfect copies of that. You don't continue to lose quality after the first copy.

But lots of pirated movies, for example, are perfect rips from the original DVD, and there is nothing stopping pirates from ripping perfect copies of CDs. Most just chose to go with low bit-rate MP3 for size convenience.

They can freely distribute your copies all they want. But they can't make copies of your work - that right belongs solely to you. Of course, if you could care less, nobody's going to get in any trouble.


You individually, probably not. But a billion downloads a day, that will hurt the entertainment industry and the entire economy. Even if nobody would ever pay for that song otherwise - it creates a culture where stealing is OK, and if you want something, you feel you're entitled to have it (there have already been more than a million downloads of the Wolverine movie).

Technotainment on Variety.com


There's no doubt pirates can help promote the artist. That's the artist's call though, not the customer's. If the artists think that lots of people getting free stuff will help them out - they can give away lots of free stuff. Companies do this all the time. But if the artists DON'T want to give away mass free stuff, it's a silly argument to say that it's actually good for them. That's THEIR call. I mean, why in any universe should that be the decision of the customer, that sums of the sense of entitlement very well.

Here I would disagree. For centuries artists had no legal claim to their work. Live performance was often copied and claimed as another individual's work. The song or bit wasn't what separated performers, but the virtuosity of the performer. Only in the twentieth century when previously live performances could be recorded and sold did a singer or actor have any hope of making money on the text/music.

That's one of the reasons I'm torn on this. As an actor/director I feel a great sense of ownership to my work, but I also understand that the distribution of other work inspires my own. Also, the means of protecting the artist has more often been a way of shifting the profits from the artist to the producer.

I was reading the NY Times Editorial on the possible end of paper news and was reminded of this thread. In a way I wonder how much difference there is between downloading copyrighted music illegally and cutting and pasting news (much like I did in the first post of the thread). Somebody went out there and had to get the information for the article and the newspaper (or whatever media source) had to pay that person to write it, pay for the servers, etc.

Well, in the US, it's strictly civil, overseas it's criminal. The RIAA wanted it to be criminal (as so to push the investigating costs to the Department of Justice, while they would get the settlements), but it's not yet.. we haven't gotten that far.. yet.

The issue for newspapers is advertising. No one has been able to come up with an online model that makes anywhere near as much in ad revenue as newspapers used to. It may deny them a slight amount of ad revenue, but even sending everyone to their site won't equal the ad revenue from paper copies.

So, if you simply choose to degrade the quality out of convenience, rather than lack of options, you are guilty of making a perfect copy? If you lack the technology to even have a chance at a perfect copy, you're doing alright?

That is not entirely true. There have been artists out there who have had DMCA notices served on them by the record label.

Are you sure? Perhaps you should take a closer look at both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act).

Understood, but I guess what I was getting at was how much difference in terms of theft is there between cutting and pasting an article and illegally acquiring music?

I think this is the problem with making copyright theft a criminal offense. I'm not debating it morally, but making it criminal could be a slippery slope. What you post above is copyright violation. Frankly, I don't have faith in the government to properly assert whether one form of copyright violation should be a criminal offense or not.

The point was that before, every copy made kept degrading the quality. This is not true anymore, and any degradation is the choice of the person making the copy.

My big stink with this has been that if you were talking about a video game, a fair chunk of those who steal it in this manner then call asking for tech support. Or as seen in the Demigod issue, flood the servers blocking out legitimate customers. In those cases, yes you are harming folks.

So therefore it must become a criminal act?

Like I said at the very start, every argument comes down to "wanhhh, but I want, want, want it!".

Every one of these fallacious arguments can be applied to another crime that everyone will acknowledge is a wrong thing to do. Copyright has become a 'special' case jsut because so many people have done it they think it has to get a special status. Unfortunately, this was inevitable, back when I started this whole stance the internet was still fairly primitive. All the arguments were around how the numbers would be small, the quality and bandwidth would turn people off, the conversion rates of pirates into sales would be huge. Every single one of those went exactly how I thought it would years ago, and the consequences panned out about the same:

- Piracy has grown in numbers dramatically, you are now considered the exception if you don't think it is okay.

- Bandwidth has grown massively, and the ability to copy at high quality improved, and the ability to transmit efficiently has improved. So the 'bad copy' argument is already dead, and if not it will be in a couple years as everyone is on the giant GB measured pipe.

- Conversion rates of pirates are still low. So low that the whole 'there isn't enough data' bullshit you keep spouting should actually be applied to the theory of piracy leading to sales, not the other way around.

As for the consequences:

- Companies would eventually take it seriously and increase efforts to attack pirates. Check.

- Some companies would crunch the numbers and find a way to make a profit off it as a business. Check.

- Pricing and profits of those businesses will be under a lot of downward pressure due to their 'free competition', and the supposed morality of pirates will make the transition to paying for something that 'used to be free' slow. Check (in my opinion).

You are not entitled to luxury goods, like music, books, movies, and so on. If they don't sell it in Korea, tough. If they don't provide it through the channel you want, at the price you want, tough. If you get thrown in jail when you pursue your other options (theft), tough.

Stealing material is not a market force, it is a security cost. Pirates are why we are seeing terrible DRM software that makes paying customers incapable of using a product many times. Pirates are why software companies need to have a lawyer available to file takedown requests all the time. Pirates are the simplest example of a free loader in economics, there are half a million papers you could read about how they impact systems in a negative fashion (in or out of the field of intellectual property).

No, because the ease with which you can make high quality copies has turned copyright from "I printed and sold a few books I didn't have the rights to" to "I stole that album/game/movie before the public could buy it and distributed it for free across the globe". The amount of damage you can do is much greater now.

And this comes down to you wanting the market to act the way you expect it should based on your morals. Its not working that way so instead of destroying your customer base and getting bad PR more time should be spent finding out ways to get people to want to pay for your goods rather than finding ways to punish those that don't.

Best Buy keeps getting brought up comparing digital theft to physical theft, but if best buy had a problem with people stealing their goods do you think they would put in security measures that would make people uncomfortable going into their store, hope that the police just fix everything for them, or would they attempt to find some non-intrusive security measures?

What penalty would you assign to someone who leaked some movie prior to release and is watched by millions of people (say piracy of movies becomes as popular as music)... and they decide not to buy a ticket for it now?

Say only ten percent are determined to actually willing to go see the movie if they didn't get that preview. So 100,000 tickets multipled by what, $5 a generous ticket price these days... are you saying the only remedy should be a civil suit for $500,000? That will probably take the pirate, likely some half-assed college student, about 30 to 40 years to payoff?

Oh, and put the burden of proof on finding said pirate on the movie company to begin with... like they have an investigation arm that can track the entire internet and locate the pirates. And have them do it for every movie they release, and so on...

The public can criminalize anything it wants to, see example A marijuana, at some point it comes down to a public policy decision that was made by the government for some reason in the public interest.

It seems you want to argue that it is not in the public interest to pursue this crime through criminal courts. In that case, prove it. Show me a good, ethical reason, that it is not in the public interest to protect copyright. "What about the poor itsy bitsy pirates, and sticking it to those big meanie music men!" is not good enough, I'll let you know in advance. Rooting for the underdog is not particularly an ethical question, it might just feel good (like getting away with a bank robbery scott-free would probably feel good).

Way off topic, but this is a really bad example for proving your point. The criminalization of marijuana had everything to do with the government (actually a very small number of people in the gov't) enforcing their morals on the American people for their own gains.

Very side-point, because I agree with most of what SportsDino and others have been saying, but anyone who doesn't go see the Wolverine movie based on the leak is a moron. I didn't pirate it, but was curious to see a small video of what it looked like and it was just ridiculous. Most visual effects were missing, and a lot of the time it just looked silly.

Best Buy already has enough bad policies, but if 'everyone' started yanking DVDs off the shelves instead of paying for them... I am pretty sure after the first million they would get pissed off enough to put in even draconian measures.

You are bringing up the whole 'piracy as a market force' debate which I've battled before, but that comes down to "you cannot compete with free". It is simply impossible. Like I said before, there are 99% morons out there, and 1% creators... so by default the market is 'gimme gimme, I'm a selfish turd, I want it and I can get it without spending my money, so its mine, fuck you nerd!'. The only thing stopping that mob is the law, I think piracy among everything else in our modern society shows that the morale compass often is ignored in favor of the selfish ego.

This is not a market, if you had even a hint of economic knowledge I'd bother to go down the path of how looters and free loaders completely devestate market economies. A market implies trade, this is not trade, it is theft, I don't see why fools can't understand that. If I could steal the physical fruits of your labor, I would be exactly the same as a pirate (although you guys say because its a copy that its not stealing). If you want to go even more abstract, we could apply some variant of 'tragedy of the commons' to the problem, and show similar damage to the inventor, namely that the faster a unique contribution is diluted without profit to the creator, that incentive or ability to create declines rapidly.

In all of these cases, it is not 'market forces' that causes the situation to resolve. It is the creation of an external force to enforce laws that ban those other behaviors. The closest we get to economic forces in all of this is that the original creator eventually starts to say "I'm losing so much money due to this, I need help".

You are acting like they should change their distribution model to serve your whim. Guess what, they ARE doing that, and the statistics support that it is not enough. Yes, they are tapping new markets, but the core problems are still there and rampant, and most evidence indicates that they are leaving profit on the table because of the unique problems of market share that piracy introduces (reducing the rate of growth of those solutions until they developed hardware/software integration, like iPhone/iTunes, which gave them a competitive advantage over pirate options).

It also cost them massive amounts of money to set up those systems, not to mention quite some time figuring out how to pay the artists, which pirate systems obviously didn't need to do.

All of that, and piracy is still a massive force. It resides OUTSIDE the market, quit acting like it is noble or even tolerable. It is like me going to your house, stealing all your stuff, and telling you after the fact "And let that be an incentive to you jackass to buy a better lock for your door!". Do you want to make that a civil matter only and see how far the crime wave goes? Or would you be happy to have the cops bust me?

Not from me, but since you keep repeating this mantra you must somehow hope it will magically become true. When all else fails you, just start attributing false statements to others in hopes the audience will believe it is true.


Make sure it is more apples to apples than apples to oranges and it might be more convincing.


No. It wasn't a non-criminal event because people wanted to give it special status. It was that way because it was intended to be that way. It was determined that it wasn't the job of the government to protect business interests in a free market. It was determined that the government would provide a reasonable term of exclusive control over an item (a set number of years, broken into 2 terms) and then these items would become public domain. It would provide a venue, the courts, to resolve disputes involving your copyright. They did not offer up the power of the government as a tool for big business to enforce their private copyrights with, and I believe they had the right idea. They also limited the terms so that the public might derive benefit from our creations. I assure you that the continued expansion around copyright laws has nothing to do with the public good and has everything to do with the interest of big business to stamp out the entire concept of public domain. The evidence supports this view. For argument's sake, I would gladly accept copyright infringement becoming criminal if we could just roll back copyright terms to 28 years.


I do not believe I have said it is ok. I certainly do not think it is ok right now. You confuse my view regarding copyright enforcement as a civil activity as approval of copyright infringement. I don't know where you got it from, but you don't seem to mind making things up.


And we are still well behind what is happening in some other countries in this area.

So you want reform of copyright law? That is all well and fine, I'm all for a copyright of 28 years, and criminal court enforcement of it.

Look, I'm aware companies are nasty beasts, but at some level they are at least paying a share to the content creators, whereas mass piracy (i.e. if the trend continues to an even worst state) would make it rough on content creators. There is a difference between fighting their excesses, and arguing about whether you are allowed to attack piracy.

In my opinion the problem is people pirating stuff that is less than X years old, and every tactic that is reasonable to stop that should be pursued (in my opinion criminal enforcement being one). As for defining X years, or broadening fair use for the modern day... I'd probably fall in your camp. But that is a separate issue from whether the 'X years' is enforced as criminal.

My problem is when the 'I want it' crowd uses the 'big bad corporation' argument to support piracy. Two separate issues. It is like saying two wrongs make a right.

Say copyright was 28 years, and definitions were made more reasonable. Do you think civil courts are capable of stopping the current abuse that is occurring in an effective manner? I obviously do not.

If the problem is lost revenue, how do they get it back by putting them in jail?


Ok. So the burden of protecting their copyright is just too much. They want to outsource this to the government where the cost involved is paid, to some degree, by every person and business in the country (whether they own any copyrights or not).


I suppose the issue here is proving it was actually in the public interest. Only a fool believes that everything the government puts into law is really in the best interest of the public at large.


It is in the public interest to protect copyright, which is why you should be able to sue for violations of your copyrights. I never argued otherwise.

I never said anything in support of piracy. You dreamed that up.

The penalty for any kind of theft involves more than restitution. None of the money lost from theft is recovered by putting people in jail. But you might prevent a lot of theft with the threat of jail. And you might prevent more theft by having thieves in jail.

I know you're concerned about the mere possibility of pirate users being put in jail, but again, that's never happened in the US, as far as I know. It's theoretically possible to get 6 months in jail for having a messy yard or a barking dog under misdemeanor nusiance statutes in most states. But if anyone ever actually got 6 months for a messy yard, it would be unconstitutionally excessive, barring extreme aggravating factors.

At least we agree on something. Unfortunately, Disney and others have deep enough pockets to make sure we can never roll this clock back.


I never claimed piracy needed to be embraced, was ok, or should not be fought. I said that government force, being paid for by everyone who is forced to contribute to government revenues, should not be used to enforce copyrights. The judicial system is a sufficient venue for resolution of these matters.


With copyright terms out there up to 120 years, public domain simply does not exist. When you are not likely to see a work produced during your life enter the public domain, it essentially no longer exists. If copyright terms can be reigned back into something much more reasonable, there is ground for compromise. The "copyright holders" want it all. They want ever-increasing copyright terms, and criminal prosecution for infringement as well. It is a win on all fronts for them. How extending copyright terms that long is truly in the interests of the public good is bizarre to even think about. Having more works enter the public domain sooner is what is really in the interests of the public. That way we can create far more new things, even if they are derivative works, without waiting for stodgy old people/companies to be willing to share their cash cow with us. These people/companies have built huge business models based on these copyrights and they are afraid of losing even more revenue when that slips back into the public domain. I do not know this to be true, but it seems to me that they fear public domain more than piracy. It would cause them to innovate and not be able to sit back and cash in the checks for 70 year old material.


I agree. However, when you see the law moving in their favor repeatedly over the past 30 years, what do you do? At some level, people need to understand that piracy may represent an act of civil disobedience at this point. The concept of public domain was to benefit all of society, and it is basically dead now.


Maybe, maybe not. It would certainly provide a wealth of material that would enter the public domain immediately. If material from 1981 and before suddenly entered the public domain and you were free to do anything you wanted with it, it would probably keep people very busy for a while.

Except that it isn't.

How? Because they find it too difficult or expensive and want to outsource this enforcement to the taxpayers as a whole?

They are free to choose alternatives to the traditional copyright structure, if they want to. You know they don't have to all follow the same path, don't you?

Sportsdino, you have a serious problem with assuming that anyone that doesn't want to to see people that pirate software, music, ect rot in prison for the rest of their lives is a pirate themselves. Read my fucking posts above and see that I don't pirate shit so stop talking down to me like your somehow morally superior to me.


No, they wouldn't. They'd be smart enough to realize that if they went to draconian measures people would stop shopping there and take their business elsewhere. Treat everyone like a criminal and you're going to lose your legit customers.



It absolutely nothing like you coming into my house and stealing a damn thing. If you can't see that then there's no reasoning with you. Piracy is theft, NO ONE HERE IS ARGUING THAT, but to compare it to robbing someone's home is asinine.

Your posting sums up why piracy is still a major problem. Businesses are completely out of touch with their customer base. Instead of looking at pirates as potential customers you look at them as criminals (before you go jumping onto the last sentence read the above paragraph again). Piracy is theft, but pirates are also a big part of your customer base so by attacking them you're going to end up turning your own customers against you.

You want to see a company that has very little problem with piracy and manages to escape the negative PR because of their views on it? Look at Valve. Read Gabe Newell's thoughts on piracy and how Valve as a whole deals with it now and plans to deal with it in the future.

oh, and go fuck yourself.

Nobody here is arguing that pirates should rot in prison for the rest of their lives. That's your false assumption.

I think pirates should have their mousing hand cut off.

I'll just cut this short and skip straight to, yes you are an idiot. And Valve's solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(content_delivery) has its detractors as well (although overall I think it is a great idea).

I will never agree to criminal activity being used to enforce mob rule over content creators. End of story, fuck you, etc.

The more I think about this, the more apropos it feels in this discussion. We've sort of got this "play nice" mutual agreement where we include the source/link/byline when we copy/paste an article...but mostly that's for verification purposes, not because any of us are thinking about the copyright.

In some ways, this is the equivalent of walking into a convenience store, cutting an article out of the paper and passing it around to your friends...or at least in the same way that file sharing is theft.

It's pretty clear that newspapers and other online content providers have accepted this sort of behavior because passing text around easily is the nature of medium. They've done the whole "politely suggest that people cite sources" thing, but don't troll around on message boards suing people who don't.

So, newspapers are a case of IP providers who have embraced the new business model.

Unfortunately, they all seem to be going belly up. I'm not sure what that means for the record industry and a new, internet-based business model.

Because the person who pirated may not have anything to give up. There is plenty of white collar crime that is considered "crime" for reasons like this.


What alternatives would you suggest that will deter people from stealing? How else do you propose to protect something like video games where having the playable format in electronic form means you can play it how you want? Sure, everything could be an MMO, but even they are dealing with the nightmare of security and hacking and piracy. Sure, you can do episodic content, but then everyone gets mad that you didn't ship the data with the game to begin with.

The major players are still trying to figure out how exactly the law should deal with this. Copyright was an early easy model, but it doesn't quite fit software. Hence some of the changes, like the attempt to criminalize it. It's much like hacking; you aren't physically trespassing, but you are virtually trespassing. The law has to adapt to keep up with technological changes.

Technically, you aren't supposed to paste the whole article, just an excerpt with a link to it.

They don't charge you with "virtually trespassing." It is unauthorized access. Also not the kind of thing that was historically dealt with in civil courts, is it? Or have they routinely been trying people in civil courts for unauthorized entry?

I wish somebody would take care of that copyright infringer. No tolerance for any of it, I tell you! There don't have to be damages, you just have to infringe!

Now you're coming full circle. Making a copy of a video game is stealing, and that hasn't routinely been tried in civil courts either, has it?

Copyright was originally intended to cover written material, period. It got extended to things like sheet music. There was no recorded music at the time (copying the actual performance, or a particular reading of a novel), no movies, and certainly no software. It used to be an issue between businesses, now individuals with little to no income can do the copying. Times have changed, and the law is changing to keep up with them. Deal with it. One of the government's jobs is to regulate commerce, it's even in the Constitution.

And you've ignored every case of damages I've presented here. Video game pirates do PLENTY of damage beyond the (potentially) lost sale of the game.

Is it stealing? Or are you infringing copyright? Or both? Which is it?


So, in effect, people go to jail because they don't have the resources to pay for their damages. Is this the new version of debtor's prison?


Are they charged with regulating commerce, or regulating commerce between states? The latter is what I recall, but I have not read the document in a while. That would mean that they should not be involved with commerce that starts and stops within a particular state, unless my recollection is wrong.

I have not ignored any of it. Maybe I didn't jump and down and proclaim it proof that copyright infringement is criminal. I'll grant that much.

Unauthorized access is unauthorized access, whether you go through a door, window, or enter a computer system. If I take your book, it is not copyright infringement. It is only copyright infringement if I copy and use your book without authorization. They are not the same thing and saying it over and over again will not make it so.

I think you're missing the point. Nobody's saying, "the restitution would be huge, nobody could afford it, the intellectual property owners could never be made whole, so let's send them to jail instead". Jail isn't an alternative to paying fines. It's a punishment, independent of fines and restitution.


Copyright isn't authorized by the commerce clause (though FYI, the commerce clause has been interpreted extremely liberally, and allows Congress tor regulate pretty much everything - they could easily regulate copyright protection under the commerce caluse), it's actually authorized by the....Copyright Clause:

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, empowers US Congress:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Now I'm sure that you don't feel that the current copyright time is "limited", but Congress was given clear obvious power to regulate Copyright, including criminally.

It's pretty amazing that the framers were so concerned with copyright protection before recorded music, the internet, etc. That's pretty telling.

You are right. It's also not grand theft auto. But all of them are versions of theft and all should be criminal acts. That's all we're saying.

The plaintiff in a criminal case is "the people". A "wrong" becomes criminal, rather than civil, when it implicates more than the people involved in the transaction. You breach a contract, that's between you and the other party. You steal something, that has ramifications on our entire economy.

Oh. I must have misunderstood. I would have sworn that some people in this thread were saying that you had to really punish these people because there was no hope that they could ever pay for the damages caused.


No arguments here. I am sure they understood the value of giving creators exclusive license for a limited time. They also believed in public domain, which we are told is completely unimportant because nobody can turn a buck on it. Our economy will totally collapse if we don't let corporations hold copyrights for 120 years.

If you date the birth of the US as July 4, 1776, that makes us only 232 years old. A current copyright term of 120 years, being more than half of the age of the entire nation, is certainly not "limited" by any reasonable interpretation of the word.

Why was it not criminal before the late 90s?

Are you suggesting our current economic troubles are due to the unauthorized distribution of software, music, and movies?

I don't know, I was not privy to their discussions.

But if it has always been theft, as you claim, how come it went unnoticed for nearly 200 years? Surely you have a theory, don't you?

no

Oh, good. I thought you were claiming that it has been devastating to our economy, yet it seemed to be going pretty strong until December of 2007. I'm trying to find the major ramifications/effects this is having on our economy.

I don't know if it's always been considered theft. I know it is considered theft now though.

And you have no theory as to why it wasn't "in the public interest" to make it criminal 20 years ago? Even 15 years ago?

My theory would be that technology dramatically changed.

Technically, but no one is going to court over it...despite the fact that this practice may be even more universally ignored than mp3 piracy.

And one thing we know about copyright protection is that if the copyright holder isn't aggressive in defending it, the courts have historically not enforced it. That is, the courts have treated copyright as a civil matter -- you tell us infringement took place, then we'll notice. We (as agents of the government) won't go looking for it on your behalf.

So, did the newspaper folks as an industry just decide that it was too difficult to go the RIAA's route? Or are newspaper articles worth less as artifacts than songs?

I'm sort of curious about why written text folks went the other route for the same offense.

I can appreciate this. The capability of the average person to do wonders with "consumer grade" hardware is vastly improved today.

I don't know if I will ever be swayed completely to the other side, but the discussion has helped me better understand the different views that are out there.

I would certainly be more inclined to agree to more draconian copyright infringement protections if I knew that the terms were limited, and not subject to another round of payoffs next time Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain.

The reason it is "theft" is that we are dealing with an amorphous medium and aren't talking about physical copies at all. It's where the confusion and debate comes in. You can make a copy without affecting the original, you can make a copy very cheaply, and you can then distribute that copy very cheaply. The second two were not around when the original laws were put in place, so the law is adjusting. Copyright was used early when there were no laws to cover the change in technology, and now those laws are being updated and do consider it theft. Penalties for those in possession are mild (damage can be minimal), penalties for those who distribute should be severe (even RIAA went after folks for making their music available, the whole debate was over whether or not those folks were aware they were making it available), and penalties for those who make the copies to distribute should also be severe.

Also understand it's a broad spectrum the laws are trying to keep up with. Everything from singing "Happy Birthday" at a party, through downloading an MP3, through bootlegging a pre-release album, to copying a DVD from a friend, to uploading that DVD to a filesharing service, to copying a game, to calling the game company's tech support hotline, to decrying all over the internet message boards how buggy your pirated copy of a game is, to distribuing the game/DVD/album on the streets in Asia, and on and on. There is a wide spectrum of damages here, and it's a far cry from printing a book or sheet music back in the 1700s...

I have a friend who once worked for Sony Records. There is something he told me about the industry that just doesn't jive with the gung ho approach some of you have to this issue. It goes down like this...

For every CD that was released under the watch of his manager, his manager would get about 25,000 CDs for himself. He could give these away, sell them, put them in the dumpster, it did not matter. The artists received NOTHING for these. They were an off the books transaction, effectively. These were routinely sold through a distributor ran by a family member, turning significant bucks on the side that did not have to be shared with the company or the artists involved. He claims this is standard operating procedure in the industry. The executives potentially make lots of off the table money from each album that comes out of their studio. This guy is trustworthy, but I have not talked to anybody else who has been on the inside somewhere else to see if it really is rampant in the industry.

For the sake of argument, if this is true, is this theft and/or copyright infringement?

No, because the record label owns the copyright. It's their CDs, they can do whatever the hell they want with them, it's their right. NOT the consumer. There is no entitlement to free music just because the copyright owner decides to award an essential bonus to an employee. This is like McDonalds givings away free french fries to employees, and then someone complaining that they don't you free french fries too. It's THEIR french fries. (If the artist doesn't like that the label does that, don't sign away copyrights to the label).

You keep saying that you're not claiming infringement isn't wrong, you just don't think it should be criminal, but you continue to try to minimize it. Stealing an album or a video game isn't the worst crime ever. It's like stealing a toothbrush, maybe even less, on an individual level.

I've never understood how the sale/trade of used records/cds/video games fits under copyright law, seeing how many is being exchanged, and some sort of property is being exchanged, but certainly nobody with any claim to that intellectual property is getting a single cent of that transaction, or has any control over it. If I buy a used CD, aren't I 'stealing from the artist' in exactly the same measure as if I downloaded the MP3s for free? It doesn't seem that the fact that some greasy middleman at the pawnshop gets $5 from me, should invalidate the copyright. Likewise, if the original purchase of the property gives me the right to sell or give away that property at my convenience, how come I can't give it away digitally? I understand the ethical complaint, I just don't understand the legalese of how the sale or giving away of second-hand copyright material is considered legal. Anyone care to 'splain to me?

What? It was a simple question. I am concerned that reading is something you are not good at. I never said anything about entitlement. Are you on Earth?


I keep saying that I am not knowing infringement is wrong? What the hell does that even mean? And then I try to minimize it? When did I do that?

I'm just curious, how much extra revenue does the used games/cd industry bring back to the companies? If EB sells a used PS3 game for $40, how much of that is pure profit and how much is going back to the game-developers? And if a used CD is sold from any of the Used CD stores, does any of that go back to the artist or is it "pure profit" for the retailer?

The answers:
A) Zero.
B) How much of that is profit for the retailer? 100%, developers? 0%
C)How much of that is profit for the retailer? 100%, developers? 0%

On the other hand, on the initial sale of an item, retailers only take a 15-20% margin, which isn't enough to keep a store open. The real issue is how much extra revenue would a developer take in if specialty retailers were to cease to exist?

People might buy less games, music, and movies if they knew they would never be able to trade/sell it w/o dealing with the corporate machine. I've been told that the used game business is the only way that teens, for example, are able to bring their market forces to that industry. If they were not able to sell back or trade in their games at their favorite game store, they would be buying a lot less games every year.

I am sure the industry would love to put a stop to all of that gray market activity, since they are a cartel and want a cut of every transaction.

What if distributors went all in on the online-market and cut the prices of their software, removing the costs involved with distribution?

I find it astounding that I have to pay €49 for a game on Steam that I can buy a hard-copy of for €39, only because the distributors "do not want to force physical retailers out of business"..

I bought 4 games the last week, Majesty, Stronghold, Crusader Kings and Victoria. Paid max $15 for the most expensive one. Not only did I buy them easily online, I don't have to have physical CDs lying around the office either. All games are stored on servers and I can install/uninstall at my own convenience.

There were no distribution costs for neither Paradox nor GoG in these cases, no CD-pressing costs, not physical storing costs. Bandwidth and server costs, yes, but in comparison they're low.

So why do I have to pay more for a digital copy of a game than for a physical copy in the case of, for example, FM? Oh, I forgot to mention, the Steam-price is excl. VAT, which is included in the store-price.

This tirade may sound like it has nothing to do with the Pirate Bay trial, but what I'm sort of getting at is that the main reason younger people do not buy games is because they're WAY too expensive. Lower the prices, see the sales go up, I promise.

Before I bought the four bargain-games, I hadn't bought a game since February, when I bought FM, in a store by the way. Before then I hadn't bought a game since July last year, and it was Madden 08 for the PS3 for $39.. I haven't pirated a game since I had a Commodore 64 in the 80s, but I've gone from buying perhaps a game or two a month to hardly buying any games at all.. they're not worth it.. while I can afford them, I don't think a game I usually end up playing for two-three hours before being bored is worth the price of 6-7 lunches.

I've seen the Steam studies on the lowering of prices, and they are intriguing.

But if the price is too high, don't buy, it's that simple. High prices do not justify stealing; we're dealing with games (movies/music), not food. If people didn't buy at the prices, they'd either come down or the developers/publishers would go out of business. That still does not give you the right to a free copy of the game. And it certainly doesn't give you a right to call tech support when you have a problem with the game you stole.

Prices are an ancillary issue, not a primary issue. For several years now I have only been buying games that are one version older, and often priced very low as a result, or taking advantage of other discounts. I do not pay retail for any games.

I don't buy more than 2 or 3 a year, at best.

I'm not buying games at high prices, nor do I pirate them. I'm just saying that I'm sure that lowering prices would have a positive effect on sales versus pirated copies.

I know you've been pushing the issue about tech support etc, and I'm not objecting to that.. I'm just saying that the entire debate and all of the companies resources are focused on preventing piracy by bringing people to court.. no one is trying to see what's wrong with the industry..

WHY ARE PEOPLE PIRATING!?

It's not as easy as saying "because they can".. I know how to and I'm not doing it.. I bet most people on this board know how to, and they're still not doing it. Try to find the root cause of the issue rather than just pointing fingers (that's a general suggestion to all game distributors).

I think that a large percentage of pirates would still do it if the games cost $5.

The root cause of the issue has already been pointed out: when given a choice between "free" and "costs something", many many many people will choose "free" regardless of the consequences. There remain just enough that are willing to pay for games to keep things rolling along, but there are plenty that just want it for free.

Yes, reducing the price can reduce that equation, but that mostly works for online distribution where you are cutting out middelmen (and console games are more difficult, because in addition to the retailer / distributor, the console maker gets a cut as well), and the remaining middleman (the distributor) has to be willing to take less as well. But online distribution is certainly gaining in popularity, and may in fact become the wave of the future.

However, even cheap casual games deal with piracy, so you still have to combat it. There are plenty of crimes where you can remove the incentive to do it, but people still do it, so you still have to have punishment in place to deter it.

And as I've said above, this does not necessarily involve going after the individual person who downloads a game, which all the people arguing against me want to focus on. Pirate Bay helped distribute pirated software. THOSE are the folks you really need to go after, and I'm happy to see companies doing so.

Valid point.. but look at it from this angle: Those who do "pay to play".. can they be encouraged to buy more games? I may be a minority, but as I pointed out in another post, I've gone from buying 2-3 games a month to maybe buying one full price game every 6 months. Can I be encouraged to buy more games? If so, how?

I'm willing to bet that many of those people who pirate games today would not buy them even if there was no alternative.. While they're stealing the product, it's not a lost sale since they wouldn't have paid for it anyway.

Focus on the people who want to pay, and give them better offers..