Posts by Mark Harris
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Or that I am an abuser of Cheese
Wholly crap! That's one I'm please to say I knew nothing about. And I aim to keep it that way.
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Ben, I think Mark was talking about the impact of digital connectedness rather than copyright - and I tend to agree with him that represents a quantum leap rather than just more of the same.
What he said
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Like major record labels, fer instance..
I don't object to them making money, if they're adding value. I do object to them criminalising their customers, like me, by placing DRM on every track and screaming "Piracy!" every time they put out a piece of crap no-one wants to buy.
I'm looking around the net for some evidence that the most downloaded songs are the least revenue-incurring, which would prove their point, but I'm not seeing it.
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Creative Commons is a great start, creating a framework for people to opt out of old copyright. Now there's the small matter of how to look after everyone else (really, Giovanni? Why don't you tell us more?)
You seem to be saying that CC is different from copyright. It's not - it's an application of copyright.
I wonder if CC could become the workable blueprint for artists to cede some of their rights, and retain the ability to cash in on others. Like allowing to play a track at a certain bitrate, but selling it at another, or free distribution of digital images at a certain resolution whilst selling the prints. Or lowering the threshold for legitimate creative reuse, or educational fair use.
I understand what you proposing, but I see it as fiddling with the edges, trying to trim the block to make it fit, when we really need a new foundation stone.
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Actually, you're the one who keeps applying the old economy, and the old law, by seeing value of creative works in the medium that carries them and the balance sheet of, say, a record store that has bought somebody's music in CD form.
I call "misrepresentation".
Have you ever built a new building on an old site? You have to pull down the existing structure. If it's interdependent with other structures, you have to do it carefully.So you have to define what the problem is with the existing structure and examine the impact of removing it.
We can't discuss the old economy unless we have a shared understanding of nature of it and that means agreement on what the terms are. The only place we can get a shared understanding of what the terms mean, when defining a legal construct is the existing law.
The fact that you only see loss and theft when music is purloined in one way rather than another seems supremely illogical to me and stems directly from that narrow model.
Again, with the misrepresentation.
<deep_breath>
There IS only theft when music is purloined in one way rather than another.
It's not MY perception- it IS the law, as it stands.YOU, on the other hand are trying to conflate some ethical standpoint, regarding artist remuneration, with the legal construct that is copyright, and infringement thereof. When your law is based on a particular set of ethics that are not necessarily shared by all, it is bad law. That is why the law generally eschews ethical and moral aspects in its language and execution (though not necessarily in its creation).
And your claim that piracy might be good for music (what you call "reality") is just as rubbish as the recording industry's claim that every track downloaded has to be considered as equalling one sale lost.
Actually, I'm looking at a growing body of pretty credible research. Whether it's correct or not, I'm still not sure, but examining the research seems a better option than slamming down the hatches and screaming "Piracy is killing the music industry !! (which, just coincidentally, had its best year last year)"
You just don't know, and to assume that it's the case (and that will remain the case in the future) shows your ideological leaning.
See above re research. I don't know that Darwin was right about evolution, but it seems a whole lot more credible to me than "the animals went in two by two".
But even if it were true, surely it should be up to an artist whether or not to promote themselves but giving their creations away or not, and if yes, how?
Please point me where I've said otherwise.
I don't understand the second half of your sentence, sorry. How what?So computer piracy is to the recording industry what the car was to a horse-and-cart? Interesting analogy.
And you have the hide to call me insulting? Ha!
I have not made that analogy. My analogy is that digital technology in the recording industry is to old recording industry business models as the car was to the horse and cart. And yet more. I said before that it's a fundamental change in paradigm, one of the biggest we as a species has ever encountered. The two comparable tipping points are fire, and writing.
Coming from one of the readiest-to-insult participants in this discussion, it's a bold statement.
Sorry, "emotive" is an insult, now? How interesting.
And again, what you call a mis-definition, I call trying to account for the views and the interests of all the stakeholders in this debate,
So, the "pirates" have no stake in this discussion? What about the, let's see, oh yes "users"? Where is your accounting for their views and interests?
In truth, you've only been accounting for copyright holders' perspectives and then only narrowly. I'm a rights holder, yet you don't appear to be accounting for my views and interests.
and not just your fabled "individual" (who, I take it, is a consumer, or a creator who doesn't care to profit from his or her work - but at this point I'm just guessing).
Indeed, you are guessing, which you upbraided me for above. And that's a little strange, as I've been over it before.
Yes, it includes consumers, and creators, but I don't know how you arrive at "who doesn't care to profit" - you obviously haven't examined the research that I've assiduously posted links to.
It includes anyone who doesn't have a corporate structure to cling to, who would, in the old economy, have to use intermediaries and gatekeepers to access knowledge and entertainment.
It's odd - you seem to be ascribing to me the attributes of some arch-pirate who wants it all for free, now and forever. That couldn't be farther from the truth. I don't download copyright music or television shows, because I don't believe it's right. I believe creators should be recompensed.
I do download material that people make freely available, such as books, Libre software and music released under Creative Commons. I watch copyrighted shows that people make available (like the Daily Show on Comedy Central - I didn't use to but their server has got a lot better) and I only download them to the extent that I pause the stream at the start to let it back up, so it doesn't jerk its way through.
I even pay for shareware. I regard myself as both ethical, and moral (and I'm careful about the distinction), and as law-abiding, which is different again. Hell, I even let people into the stream of traffic when I don't have to, because I'm that kind of guy.
But I recognise that the current system is not working. It's actually broken beyond repair in situ because it is entirely based on the old paradigm of scarcity - the lights still flash and the wheels are going round, but the hamster's not making any headway. It needs to be "fixed" to work with the new paradigm of abundance. You can't force scarcity artificially, because it's too easily avoided.
Because of the interdependencies, we have to be careful about fixing the system. We have to know what we're talking about, and we have to agree what the terms mean. If I fall back to the legal language, it's because that's what the system is built in. Just as I would not try to correct a Spanish text using German vocabulary, I don't want to try to dismantle and rebuild copyright for the new paradigm, without doing it properly, and in the right language.
</soapbox>Does that make it a little clearer?
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Mark, I suspect Giovanni was making a point about language, not the law. The law only defines langauge in a legal context: outside that, words are defined by common usage.
No, I took his point to be about ethics, rather than language. Gio?
The battle is far from over, but as far as using the term for illegal digital copying "stealing" is doing ok in the court of "common talk".
Rob, that's the problem. Everyone will agree that theft is wrong. But what's equally wrong is labelling something that is not theft as theft. It warps the discussion from the beginning.
Understand your reasoning in wanting such a distinction made evident in language (though not in full agreement), but as a die-hard realist, you'll be well aware wantin' ain't gettin'. ;-)
Oh, yeah! But if I stop, the bastids would win by default ;-)
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Bingo! They're defining the debate and that's half the battle
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We can't expect any sort of market to work- or produce "fair value"- when the competition is free.
And yet, people are making money. I hesitate to mention Cory Doctorow, as that may bring Keir steaming on to the thread ;-) but he's satisfied that he's making more money by enabling his works to be downloaded, than he would be without it.
His novels are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards.
So, careful where you fling them assumptions, Rob.
As I said in that other thread:
I grant, that it is currently illegal to copy someone else's work for profit (some exceptions exist for tightly defined activities); indeed, I have never said or thought otherwise. As a copyright holder, I depend on that for control of my work - as a Creative Commoner, I use that control to explicitly allow certain actions under certain conditions. All this is allowed to me because I respect the law.
But I know that change has come - bigger change than the industrial revolution; change on a par with the development of written language itself. The IR was a change in scale and speed - this is a quantum shift, altering the concepts of scarcity and abundance.
Yes, we need to look at and discuss the rules we live by, but it's pointless to try and apply old economy rules to the new economic reality. I don't know why you can't see that disconnect.
If we're going to have a realistic discussion on the future of copyright, we need to do it objectively, dispassionately and logically. Tossing emotive and mis-defined terms like "stealing" into the mix does not help that discussion
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What's interesting to me is that despite all the arguing here, we are mostly in broad agreement that copyright is a good concept-
Yes, except that it really needs an overhaul in base concept to get it up to speed with the modern world, as I've argued elsewhere. Just applying the Olde Rulles(tm) is not going to cut it, going forward.
on a lifetime plus X years basis.
Negatory, good buddy. I expressed (so long ago I can't even remember what thread it's in) my preference for a flat fixed term. What that term is, I'm undecided on, but I'm pretty sure it would max out a 50 years from date of publishing.
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Kyle, how many times are you going to bring this to the table?
Which is clearly not the case. I can have two identical objects. I can point to one and say "famous artist XXX made this, I, who have very little art talent, made the other". People will pay a lot for the first, and not much for the second.
Yes. People will pay more. I agree. That's what I said above.
The items are not, however, identical if they were not made by the same person. You can take the same aria, played by the same orchestra, with the same conductor, in the same hall sung by the same singer even - once at age 20, once at age 60 - are they identical? All the features are the same, by your logic above. In case you're wondering, I would hold that they are not identical and, therefore, likely to have different values attached to them.
<Clearly the object isn't the only thing on sale, the name associated with it, their real or perceived artistic talent, and the history of the object are also part of the value of the object.</quote>
As I said previously, that's metadata. Sacha called it context. Whatever. The object is the same object, whther you articulate it's context or not.
What if I switched the labels, selling the authentic one as yours and your one as "made by xxx". As far as objectively observable, if the objects are physically identical and cannot be told apart, the buyer would pay as much for the copy because of the metadata that's now been attached to it, and would be satisfied by the purchase. How, then,can you say that the metadata, the context, is intrinsically part of the object.
People will pay large sums of money (i.e. attribute significant value) for stuff that's only rumoured to be attributable to a particular figure. Not as much as they would if it could be proven, but on the off-chance that it might have belonged to someone they revere in some fashion, or been a part of some history that is important to them.
Even gold has no fixed intrinsic value. It is worth what the market will bear at any given time. What gold has is specific intrinsic properties that make it valuable but it still depends on us* to agree to a specific price.
Any decent metalsmith could make a VC medal, and if it's well done, someone might give them a few hundred bucks for it. Won't fetch a 6 figure sum at auction like an actual VC medal awarded to a soldier in battle has.
True, but see above regarding identical.
Clearly the object itself is only half the reason art has value. There are many intangibles which can be much more influential.
You approach the truth, young jedi ;-) The intangibles are the reasons why people might hold a thing to be of high value when it has limited intrinsic value.
Example: one of Henry Moore's bronzes is incredibly valuable, because of the source of the piece, but the intrinsic value of the bronze is a fraction of the worth. If I bought one (I wish!) and melted it down (my heart skipped as I even typed that), I could make some money back on the intrinsic value, but the intangibles would no longer apply, and thus the high value would cease to exist.
However, we would still know about it, have all the records that and information that led to the high value being ascribed - what we call the provenance - and this would not disappear with the melting. Thus, they are not intrinsic to the piece.
Okay?