But it does take a degree in philosophy.

Just kidding.
Though as a philosopher who is well on his way to getting a degree, I cannot pass the opportunity to say that right and wrong are often subjective concepts and not that easily defined or delineated.
No matter how hard we may try, there can never be a rigid, full-proof system of ethics which is guaranteed to objectively assess and judge any given situation. So the concepts of right and wrong vary from case to case, from society to society, even from person to person.
What we think of right and wrong largely depends on what we were taught about these ideas, what our society as a whole holds as right and wrong, etc.

I must state again that I believe reactive measures such as banning, even imprisonment, are not a good way to go dealing with issues such as these. Proactive measures such as getting-of-the-high-horse-and-improving-the-quality-of-service/content-and-not-just-graphics, are.

No it's more like saying. If you drive a vehicle you WILL have violated a traffic law. You WILL have at some point gone at least 1 mph over the speed limit even if you are the most careful driver. You will have parked too far from the curb at some point. You will have waited too short a time at a stop sign. You will have not used your blinker to signal a lane change for the proscribed amount of time.



I'm not saying that I'm saying to those who want to treat copyright infringers the same as people who steal tangible items or who make no difference between the two.

Well if you want to make it theft then there cannot be by definition any provisions of 'fair use'. (which btw is so narrow as to not exist in the caselaw anymore.)I mean how would I have any ability to 'fairly use' a bag of chips or a car if I don't tell the owners of those items that I'm going to be using them?

Here is title 17 of the US code Chapter 501 (a small snippet)

(a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be.

then there is section 106-122... Basically every right under the sun is given to copyright holders.

=============

Here is title 17

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

==============

Copyright law is like traffic law. If you use the internet you WILL violate someone's copyright no matter what you do or how carefully you search. Theft requires a specific act of will. You have to choose to steal a bag of chips or a car or a CD. You can infringe copyright same as you can give a car too much gas and go over the speed limit. And the law parses no difference between actual acts "I'm going to DL this song/game even though I know I should be paying for it." and unknowing acts "Hey this sfx is pretty neat! I'll DL it to use in my powerpoint!" (of course said sound fx is copyrighted and you just infringed) "Hey this news article is informative. I'll copy/paste it into an e-mail to send to my friends as a heads up!" (You just infringed copyright).

Good, they made the dam thing.



All 229 does, and similar posts is dance round the edges, as most of the thread does. I'm still waiting, and suspect will be forever, for any logical case that disproves the fundamental right of the originator/inventor to have control over the results of their labours, and be rewarded for other peoples use of those endeavours.

Someone give a clear concise case for the abolition of the right of originators / inventors to have control over their original invention/design/creation. In thirty years of listening to this kind of "discussion" in the IT world, I've not met it yet.

There is plenty of attacks on how that provision is enacted and upheld, some of it pretty spurious to say the least, but whatever the validity of the comparison argument that is drawn on consequence and enforcement, relative to other laws - the argument put forward always dodges the fundamental question.

Anything outside that fundamental question is Fluff and smoke screen, that is actually for an enforcement discussion. It does not cut it as establishing the baseline principle for the abolition of protection for IP and original invention/design/creation which the opponents of IP protection (etc) are trying to justify.

Regards
Zy

Nice Strawman there. Where do I say copyright holders shouldn't enjoy profit from their labors... I do not nor will I ever say that...

However copyright holders cannot have the same rights as holders of tangible property because the nature of intellectual property and tangible property are fundamentally different. Only a few people can enjoy a car at any one time. A car company uses a ton of labor, parts, and materials to build a car and once they use those parts they cannot use them to build another car unless the first is recycled. And even more importantly if a car is sold the person who built the car has no rights over the person who bought it.

Now look at IP. Look at the EULA. Look at the DMCA. You pay $50 for a game and yet somehow you have no rights over it except those the copyright holder graciously extends to you! In the case of Stardock that's a pretty good amount but look at M$, Ubisoft, EA, and etc... You have no rights or recourse for ANYTHING! They can snoop on your computer. They can brand you as a potential pirate and they can wiretap your computer without any suspicion whatsoever!

A copyright holder has rights because he made the thing and can/should control its distribution to an extent but he should NOT have all the absolute rights he has based on the law over people who have paid money to purchase that product. A copyright holder should not have the right to snoop without any evidence. A copyright holder should not have the right to force a person who has paid for his product to install destructive and invasive software and the purchaser should have the right to remove that invase crap if he wants to. And yet the law gives them all those rights far above and beyond what even owners of tangible property can get

Going back to a bag of chips. Imagine if after you have bought those chips Frito Lay called you up and said we are revoking your 'license' to eat those chips and if you do you will be sued. Imagine if Frito Lay also attached a clause that said only you could eat those chips, you could not share them with another... Imagine if Ford said that only you could drive their car and they were installing an extra 'key' on their cars that had a GPS locator and if you went outside a certain area they could shut your car down without warning. Or that you COULD NOT sell your car ever. Or that if your car had brake problems they would get around to fixing it 'eventually' but that if you tried at all to fix the problem yourself you would be going to jail.

Well... Ford and Frito Lay don't have those rights. Copyright holders do even over the people who have purchased products from them aka paid money. Now a lot of them make some sense but many of those rights don't especially when enforced against people and not corporations or real counterfeiters/pirates.

The problem is the absolute imbalance and its incredible impracticality in the real world. Copyright holders have rights over end users (aka people who PAY MONEY). Because even when you PAY MONEY you don't 'own' a piece of IP... Stardock or Sony or Warner Bros. and etc does still own it. But you should have some rights. Right now you have virtually none except the ones that are grudgingly given to you and for those grudging rights you have to accept, are forced to accept, a whole lot of corporate control over you. And if you don't like it well you'll be sued if you try to remove any of that big brother control. The govn't has to get a warrant and probable cause to search or survey you. And now I'm supposed to accept that some corporation that has no obligation to anyone but its shareholders can have that equivalent while I have no recourse!?

Actually I've rethought it. I would WELCOME criminalizing ALL forms of copyright violation. Because then I would get my constitutional rights back rather than be forced to give them up in some boilerplate that gives Disney/M$/EA or etc. an absolute right to barge in with no evidence whatsoever and pry... So yeah please make copyright infringement a crime equal to theft.

Yes. I'd seriously like it if it was the govn't handing these matters and not corporates suits. I want my rights back.

Just don't be surprised when everyone who has ever used the internet gets indicted under the current laws.

A few years ago Google got sued over its image search, which is basically just a giant copyright infringement program. The courts ruled for Google based on 'well it really is against the law but we like it so we're going to let it stay.' They should have ruled against it.

The best way to change a bad law is to enforce it and imo enforcing copyright laws would get a whole lot of bad laws changed or thrown out really quickly.

Good thing it would mean the things like say game prices and music CDs will go down.

But its pretty much impossible to enforce.

And the bad part is that is would nerf but English subbed Japanese's anime. I,d end up having to wait years in some case for anime now instead of hours and to boot it would be terrible. Dubbing companies alway take longer to dub then ti take the jap to produce the episode. And the prices they sell I couldn't watch them all. Plus they most fot he time make a terrible job at subbing. And when ever TV compagnies try to open an anime only channel the CRTC says it is not allowable since a minimum of 15% or some shit like that needs to be of local content.

So on one side YAY, on the other BOOOOO

Stardock's prices are certainly cheaper. If the demand increases dramatically (meaning a lot more people buy the games), then more competing games will be made and they will get cheaper to make. People will invest more in them.

People will only pay a certain amount for a game. If "they" think it's worth $50, it's because enough of "you" think it's $50 for them to make profit that way.

EA has invested an unholy amount of money in SPORE. The game would never have been made if A LOT of people weren't willing to pay $50 for something like it.

Back when CD's first came out they were $14-16 and people paid those prices. They still pay those prices.

Same with VHS/DVD's which were always $19.99 for a newer release and then falling as things got older.

The biggest downward influence in pricing for mainstream stuff is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart FORCES producers to have a certain price point or they don't stock it and since Wal-Mart is the blue whale in the fishtank they can do that.

But even Wal-Mart charges what the market will bear whether it's a 3 for 1 $10 deal or a $20 for one new release.

Piracy is a scapegoat for high prices. Adobe products are heavily pirated but they were ALWAYS ultra expensive. Photoshop back in 1995 (when it was still an enormous program space wise) was still an incredibly expensive program, iirc $500.00-$600.00. Piracy hasn't changed the price at all. Adobe charges that because their business model calls for a small number of niche users who need the program using it for business.

My father uses a professional tax program for work. It's about $1200 but he also gets full service and support if there is a glitch or a form is wrong (and I could tell you a story about that... stupid NJ IRS...). Now this company is obviously successful because we get it every year but it operates on a business model that caters to its market and doesn't care about broke hackers who can't pay nor would pay... They also don't treat you like you're a pirate ever... My parents work at various places and have this program installed on their home computer. They can call up anytime anywhere and just ask their question no fuss no muss.

Games have always been $50 which is what they are today. Stardock puts out their games at a lower initial price probably because they are operating off a different business model than most of the big boys.

If games only cost $20, would all the people who complain they are too expensive actually buy them? Or would they continue to pay the competitive price of $0?

I'll admit. Lowering prices would increase sales. But only so many people are willing to buy a game anyway, so lowering prices gives diminishing returns. More demand would lower prices because you can just sell more $20 copies of a game that costs 10 million to make. But the fact would be that you can make money doing that. So, someone besides EA, like Stardock, would do it. The price war would lower all prices. The alternative is collusion, which is illegal. Stardock can sell games for so little because EA doesn't care if they lose a few sales to a small company. A small publisher is just a thorn in the side. If people only bought Stardock games because they are better and cheaper, then EA would lower prices to compete. (Edit: you should actually only buy Stardock stuff if you want prices to go down.)

As it is, EA makes a different product. They make huge investment games like SPORE and MASS EFFECT (which included 300 novels worth of scripting). People will pay more because arguably they are getting more. If people decided that the $10,000,000 projects weren't good enough to justify the investment, then EA would make smaller games... and they would make as many as you could buy.

(I feel obliged to apologize in advance to Frogboy, who's name was taken in vain during this post - It is worth mentioning that I know, A) that the way I phrased this almost certainly doesn't reflect the actual IP ownership of the Galactic Civilizations Franchise and you didn't make the rules - {G}. No insult intended.)

Nice Theory - There is a logical extension upon that:
Why should *anyone's* family not benefit from their parents work for lifetime+70 years?

I will grant that it is fair for Frogboy's Children to benefit for 70 years after death, if it's fair for me to be paid for the work my father does for 70 years after he dies? I mean, he works for homeland security - surely *that* is more important than a game (No matter how cool)?

And therein lies the problem - My Father . . . has been paid for his work. YES!, if he's doing it right, Americans will be benefiting from the procedures he's put in place long after he's passed away - but thems the breaks - it is *still* not right that I should get money from the work he did for a generation (three and a half actually, a generation typically being considered as a twenty year period) after he passes away (Hopefully a long time from now).

And I'm okay with that. I benefit from what other peoples fathers have done, and they benefit from my father and we are all just one big happy fleet . . . er, wrong quote . . . but we all share one culture and build stuff together. If I receive an inheritance from the estate - that's my share.

But, by the same token, it would be nice if, in twenty years, I could take ideas from Galactic Civilizations II, notice that they never made a GC III - and make *my* game, based on this work. I'm never going to get to do that, because although Frogboy's kids will benefit from my dads work *and* his work (as they should) I only get to benefit from my dads works, and that won't be any special compensation, only the general benefit that everyone gets from a competnent man having done his job well.

Unless Frogboy actively releases the work to Public Domain or GPL status, Galactic Civilizations remains the sole property of him and his heirs until sometime in the 2100's

And *that* is my objection to the length of copyright. There is a volatility in the nature of ideas and art that merits a special protection, a way to ensure that artists can make money on their work that can be passed along to their heirs. But - once that money has been made . . . that volatile nature of intellectual work no longer merits special protection. There is no 'special' reason that Disney, or EA, or Frogboy should have a monopoly on that work past that point.

Jonnan

Certainly for Arists (etc) where it can take that long for "recognition" to occur, its a real problem, many an artist has not reached "the big time" in terms of reputation until after their death. To a lesser extent, although similar, that can happen in the music world etc.

In regard to original innovation in non artist areas, where you quantify "when the money has been made"? Is it 20 years after an operating system has been developed yet the world is still benefiting from the innovation, is it - say - 30 years after version1? is it 40 years after version99? At what point do you define "the money has been made"? The company that made the product is still in existence, they are still developing or making parts of the product, the public is still buying the product.

An inventor or original entrepreneur with a very successful product expands and builds a company to develop that product. The Company benefits from the original idea or invention. At what point is that Company be designated as "having made the money"?

When has the money been made? Give a clear definition that can be applied to non artist work.


That's plain silly, as good a job as he no doubt does, he didnt invent homeland security. That crazy logic means anything and everything on the planet should be free.


You really need to re read that, it makes no sense, honestly, genuinely, I have no idea what you are trying to say.


So define what that point is - when is "when the money has been made"? Disney makes a ton of money re releasing old movies and cartoons they had made 50 or more years ago - they made them - why should they release the copy write to someone else? Its nonsense.

You want to use someone's creation, you pay for it - get used to it, its not going to change in this or any other Millenium.

Regards
Zy

Disagree. If Stardock charged $100 for GC2, it would get pirated more, the people who would pay $50 but not $100 , and would be willing to pirate, would pirate.

That's a small amount though, and we did effectively pay either $70 or $100 for GC2.

Fact is competition determines the price point, and the suitability of replacement goods. Games are an elastic market.

My whole issue is I flat-out don't trust corporations or the government to make fair legislation on IP issues. There are plenty of goods and services underrepresented in the free market, and that's due to these asinine politics. (anime being the big example- anime fans would pay for subs released before fansub groups, the issue is the business models can't support that, and since IP theft is a tort not a crime, damages cannot be proven- therefore it is low risk)

That's my other big issue- what companies ask for in damages for IP theft are unreasonable compared to the damage of the IP theft- especially on the non-distribution side. Most IP cases from the RIAA should go to a small claims court, not a US Federal District Court.