No Copyright Intended

http://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/

by aaronbrethorst • 15 years ago

183 105 15 years ago

waxy.org

herge• 15 years ago

How many people in the 60s smoked pot? Just because a majority does something does not mean it will become legal.

rickmb2• 15 years ago

Uhm, yes it does. It may take time, but in most societies, that is what eventually happens.

Only corruption and religious or political zealotry slows down the process, but eventually people will realize there's no real crime here, just a desperate reactionary attempt to maintain the status quo in a way that does more harm than good.

tptacek• 15 years ago

Corruption and religious zealotry aren't what's preventing legalization of weed. The majority of the country doesn't support it yet. The attitude of legalization advocates (I support legalization) that anyone who disagrees with them must be corrupt or in the thrall of some megachurch preacher harms the movement to legalize.

The recent California initiative is a good example of this. Rather than respecting people's reservations about legalization and finding the baby-step measure that would do the most good (e.g. keep the largest number of people out of prison or at least spare them career-destroying criminal records), California legalizers instead proposed a wish list policy that voters rejected.

There's a parallel in here somewhere with copyright legislation; it doesn't help that copyright reform advocates on the ground (ie, not Lawrence Lessig) are schizophrenic about the issue, sentimentalizing a position that reduces to virtual abolition of copyright while at the same time barking at people about GPL and working in jobs that more or less depend on copyright themselves.

mechanical_fish2• 15 years ago

Yeah, but there are lots of alternatives to pot.

Also, pot-smoking is smoking. It is (and I say this in the nicest possible way, as one who supports the legalization of pot) literally a smelly habit; it affects everyone around you, even when pursued in moderation. You can't be in the same suite of rooms as someone who is smoking pot without noticing. The experience of second-hand pot is one hell of a lot better than second-hand cigarette smoke (and not just because I get to worry less about cancer or strain on my heart; it just smells better), but still not one I go out of my way to enjoy. Such a habit is easy to culturally stigmatize compared to, say, alcohol, which is orders of magnitude more dangerous than pot – in all kinds of ways that would take an hour to enumerate – but which bothers others not at all when consumed in small amounts.

Finally, there's a European cultural tradition of alcohol consumption (even excessive alcohol consumption that bothers other people!) that is alive and well in the USA. Pot, not so much. That feature is probably what made it so hard to make alcohol prohibition stick, compared to marijuana prohibition.

There's not a lot of alternatives to learning music by mimicking other musicians, and the act of extensively reading and quoting existing published works is called scholarship and is held in high regard. Quoting creative works doesn't harm the people around you; indeed, people generally enjoy well-played cover tunes, and routinely pay people to play them. And needless to say quoting stuff is a far more fundamental cultural tradition, in Europe and everywhere else, than taking any particular drug.

shabble• 15 years ago

> Also, pot-smoking is smoking.

I don't have anything solid to back this up, but I was under the impression that in places where cannabis is legal/decriminalised/cheaper, there's an increase in oral consumption, rather than smoking (e.g. hash brownies)

I'd imagine this is partly because there's a certain element of wastage or perceived loss, and the ready availability makes it more practical. Then again, things like longer onset time and duration might turn some people off.

Mz• 15 years ago

The experience of second-hand pot is one hell of a lot better than second-hand cigarette smoke (and not just because I get to worry less about cancer or strain on my heart; it just smells better),

I generally (and thoroughly) agree with a lot of your points, but will note that I appear to break out in hives in reaction to second hand cannabis exposure. I don't do this with tobacco cigarettes.

Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things. Just sort of an observation that "YMMV".

Tsagadai• 15 years ago

The second hand effects of alcohol can also damage your health. As someone who has lived in or around nightlife districts for the last 10 years cleaning up vomit, blood and urine isn't particularly good for you. That said, I don't really care too much as it is pretty funny watching someone trying to discretely vomit in the street at 8pm.

I think society, as a whole, is becoming less tolerant of others. People get offended by the smallest things (for example, people parking crookedly) and call for laws to punish even slightly annoying behaviours. File-sharing laws have been put to the public on the annoyance factor before (that is, their file sharing is slowing down your tubes, so they must be punished).

It comes back to freedom and whether someone else acting freely limits your freedom. Unfortunately most developed nations seem to have a stronger interest in controlling people's behaviour than medieval theocracies.

EDIT: typo

Palomides• 15 years ago

what is this piece arguing for? the abolition of copyright, or a revision of fair use law? copyright can be a very useful tool for keeping things free, such as using open source licenses for software and the creative commons licenses for other works.

edit: though clearly to be good for free purposes, people need to actually understand copyright. I would say that the rather modern "everyone can create" (or remix) thing, rather than just people with a background in a creative field (which would probably include some education on the topic of copyright) has created a bit of a problem. Some sort of effort to educate the public would be pretty beneficial, in my view (imagine if everyone knew what creative commons was).

Lagged2Death2• 15 years ago

what is this piece arguing for?

Why does it have to be arguing for something? Isn't it posing a question?

sp3323• 15 years ago

Copyright isn't a normal, naturally-occurring thing. It's an artificial construct made to incentivize people to make more things. So people aren't going to understand it instinctively. You have to explain it to them from scratch, show them the difference it makes, and show them their place in the system:

If you want to incentivize creators, you shouldn't copy their stuff.

That's the message that never got communicated to these "kids".

rickmb2• 15 years ago

Or, these "kids" figured out the message is a lie.

HotKFreshSwag• 15 years ago

Or, these "kids" understands copyright and did some economical analysis and figured out that the increased spending power that comes from the money saved by copying content at zero cost was more beneficial to the economy than any benefits gained by having content protectionism.

georgieporgie3• 15 years ago

As the creator of intellectual property, my first priority is putting food on the table. The macro-economic benefit of trading my intellectual property is irrelevant to me.

guard-of-terra2• 15 years ago

But why shouldn't you remix and derive their stuff?

spacemanaki3• 15 years ago

Putting all of Pulp Fiction on YouTube hardly counts as a remix.

jessriedel• 15 years ago

A lot of people disagree with you. When talking to folk in their 50's (I'm in my 20's) about this stuff, I often hear how intuitive it is that both copyright owners and patent owners should be paid for their work. Not just to create incentives, but because it's just in the absence of law.

sp3323• 15 years ago

It may be true, but I'm inclined to think that they just got used to things being that way, so it feels normal to them.

sp3323• 15 years ago

Of course they should be paid for their work. But that doesn't mean that they should be able to restrict distribution. Thomas Jefferson argued that copyright protections are not natural, and in fact the US law specifically puts limits on which rights copyright holders can claim, and for how many years. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....

muuh-gnu3• 15 years ago

> If you want to incentivize creators, you shouldn't copy their stuff.

They do not have the legal possibility to not want to incentivize creators. In practice, they also do not have a possibility to even vote on this, and they know that basically never anyone has voted on copyright but the companies profiting from copyright. It is like a purchased law totally shielded off from democracy.

corin_4• 15 years ago

Surely the fact that all these people have no understanding of the law means they are less likely to do anything to get it changed than if they were posting videos with "disclaimer: this is copyrighted material but I don't give a shit".

And that scares me more than anything. Not that they're breaking the law, but that so many people are this ignorant. Every time I read one of those disclaimers I want to literally rip my hair out, how can anyone not realise that it's the equivilent of shoplifting while holding a sign that says "no theft intended" is beyond me.

Swizec• 15 years ago

Because it's not the equivalent at all.

It's more similar to going into a store. Looking up the ingredients on a box of cookies and writing them down to make your own batch at home, while holding up a "no theft intended" sign.

The basic premise of theft is that you are taking something away from the original owner so they don't have it anymore. The only thing you are "stealing" with copyright infringement is fictitious profits that may or may not exist at a potential time in the future.

corin_4• 15 years ago

I wasn't comparing the crime, I was comparing the excuse. It's the equivilent of punching someone while holding a sign "no pain intended". Theft no longer comes into it, happy now?

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

I think you hit the nail on the head there with the recipe analogy. Copyright infringement is a lot more like using your own recipe to make your pizza, while depriving the pizza vendor of a "potential" sale, than outright "stealing" his pizza.

But even this doesn't make a perfect analogy, because when someone pirates something, he may not deprive the owner of a sale, because he wouldn't afford to buy it (or make it) in the first place.

However, the recipe example is still a lot closer to reality than outright theft.

spacemanaki3• 15 years ago

I'm just thinking out loud and nitpicking here, I don't disagree with your comment at all. I know you just meant it as an example, but writing down the ingredients and making your own batch isn't actually illegal. What I find somewhat interesting is that writing down the recipe on the back of the box and publishing it (not verbatim, but re-written) is also not illegal. I guess recipes fall under the category of things that might be patentable, but I'm not sure. It might be an interesting avenue of study and comparison for someone wanting to use it as an example to illuminate software and algorithm patents, which are often compared to recipes in intro to CS and programming textbooks. I have no idea if this is something that would yield an interesting explanation or not, as I'm not a lawyer or very well informed on patent and copyright law.

georgieporgie3• 15 years ago

Your metaphor is also invalid. Copying digital media is nothing at all like making a cookie from a recipe.

arto• 15 years ago

Hardly the equivalent of shoplifting. If I steal your gadget, you no longer have that gadget. If I torrent your film, you still have your film.

Evidently the copyright industry is enjoying some success in their ongoing attempts to equivocate piracy with theft, but it's still disappointing to have to point out the distinction among geeks.

corin_4• 15 years ago

See above reply.

billpatrianakos8• 15 years ago

Again, physical analogies don't work for this. But you're wrong. It isn't stealing in the classic sense of the word. Yes, you still have your original work but then you have someone else out there who can potentially be profiting from your work. It's like bootlegged DVDs. Sure, the creator can still sell them in store but then he's also losing sales to the bootleggers who sell it for less than half the cost.

Just because someone wouldn't buy something to begin with doesn't mean they should be able to get it free. If I wrote a piece of software that was really useful and popular but some people couldn't afford it, well, they should save up or ask someone to buy it for them. If they get it illegally that means they wanted it badly enough that they would have paid had there been no free version on the black market.

We geeks get the distinction but you gloss over the many other ways the original author still loses out on the deal. Sure, the original creator can still sell his heart out but there are now competing sources that shouldn't be there no matter how you look at it.

Lagged2Death2• 15 years ago

Surely the fact that all these people have no understanding of the law means they are less likely to do anything to get it changed...

I think it's unrealistic to imagine there is anything at all "these people" (which the article speculates are largely not of voting age) can do to change the law. I think it's unrealistic to imagine that these laws do or will reflect the electorate's sentiments, ever.

billpatrianakos8• 15 years ago

I'm right there with you. Unfortunately it's really hard to use a physical analogy to describe it so I'll make an argument without one.

People are taking this issue which exists in a gray area and trying to frame it as black and white. These kids who put the disclaimers up grew up in a time when Napster and MP3 sharing was huge and since they didn't understand the issues then (or thought they did) they aren't trying to now nor do they have any interest in trying. Copyright is just fine. What's wrong with demanding to be paid for your creation? Why should people think they're entitled to not pay for use of your work because they believe copyright is wrong?

What if I believed tht murder was okay, went around murdering people in broad daylight then threw a fit about how "well, the laws against this are outdated and lame so you shouldn't punish me because the law sucks"?

The arguments about people not paying anyway and free marketing are both lame and they're excuses to make pirates and copyright infringers feel better. People who can't afford to buy a creation will eventually try to save up to get it. If they still can't afford it then why should they get it free anyway? I can't afford a new BMW even if I save for it, so should I be able to walk into the dealership and just take one and drive off screaming "well, I wouldn't have bought it anyway so it's not really anyone's loss!" And the only free marketing you get from this sort of thing is links to the free pirated version! No one markets the paid, original work and those who see the pirate version are more likely to have been looking to steal other digital media so it's not like they saw a recommendation for it on Amazon, they saw a link to a free copy and it's doubtful they'll search out a paid copy.

The thing about this issue is that many times you have to judge on a case by case basis. Remember the "remembering Steve" variation on the Apple logo? It very clearly used someone else's intellectual property but I think even Apple could agree that there was nothing to get upset over. This Pulp Fiction remix is kind of a gray area. The entire movie is online but just not in order. Is it different enough from the original to consider it not harmful to Tarentino ans the studio? I guess my point is that copyright isn't all bad, no one is entitled to free work as many believe these days, the reasons given for pirated material not being harmful are just excuses, and we really have to judge on a case by case basis.

I know it's not popular to defend copyright but I am anyway because there are parts of the issue that are right on. I'm with corin here and I don't get why he was downvoted like that. That little down arrow isn't there to silence unpopular opinions, it's for getting rid of trolls and off topic posts.

derleth9• 15 years ago

> no theft intended

And this is where you lose them. It is only theft to them if you take something and leave nothing. If you take something and leave the same thing, it is copying.

Honestly, you might as well try to equate copyright infringement with rape. It would make precisely as much sense to them.

zokier3• 15 years ago

Way to miss the point.

Yes, the argument still applies with rape. Or murder. Carving "No murder intended" on a fresh body does not make it less murder, nor does writing "No copyright infringement intended" lessen infringement.

_delirium• 15 years ago

It's an interesting phenomenon, not so much that many people are ignoring copyright, as that they genuinely seem confused about what it is. My guess is that it's partly actually caused by the rhetoric around intellectual property, which can backfire:

1) The ubiquitous trademark-ownership disclaimers ("All trademarks are the property of their respective owners") combined with the conflation of trademark/patent/copyright under the umbrella term "intellectual property", leads to confusion about this area, and a misbelief that a disclaimer like the one used to avoid trademark infringement can also be used to avoid copyright infringement.

2) The rhetoric around "stealing" causes people to apply a more intuitive understanding of what it means to "steal" someone else's work, which then gets interpreted as being a question of plagiarism or profiting, so uploaders make sure to clarify that they aren't "stealing" the work in the sense of claiming it's theirs or trying to sell it.

derleth9• 15 years ago

> "All trademarks are the property of their respective owners"

This is another piece of folk-law voodoo, in that, one, it is not required by any law, and, two, it does not make anything legal that would be illegal otherwise.

pbhjpbhj4• 15 years ago

It indicates you're not using the disclaimed marks to indicate origin of goods and services you are offering.

If the marks are shown alongside a notice disclaiming ownership then a registered trademark owner can't (mitigating circumstances excepting) claim that you're attempting to pass-off using their mark.

I'd be surprised if it wasn't implemented to avoid claims that mere presentation of marks were uses of the trademark. Of course if the language works then there may not be caselaw to support this as litigants could have been put off suing in cases using such a disclaimer.

Are you working in TM law in some form in some jurisdiction?

IANA(IP)L (nor working in IP presently).

As a related aside the UKIPO practice on RTM in patent specifications is of interest [to me]. Generally the examiner would [I'm a little out of date], IIRC, attempt to [get the applicant to] excise all registered trademarks that weren't essential to the understanding of the piece. Any remaining marks were to be labelled in the spec with "RTM" (for Registered TradeMark). So far as I could ascertain there was no legal requirement to do this it was just pushed as best practice. Note RTM in the UK was the legal manner and not use of ®.

Labelling a mark as "ExampleTrademark RTM" is pretty much the short-hand equivalent of saying "this trademark belongs to it's owner [and not us]".

jdietrich• 15 years ago

Practical example:

Lots of professional audio equipment is designed to digitally emulate analog equipment. There have been a number of lawsuits, usually hinging around "passing-off" - companies are justifiably unhappy with their trademark being used on someone else's equipment, even if it doesn't resemble anything they manufacture.

There is precedent for companies being successfully sued for using trademarks on the equipment itself, but precedent to the contrary for those trademarks being used to describe the character of the equipment. It is therefore commonplace to buy a guitar amplifier that has an "American Tweed" setting, but for the user manual and publicity materials to describe that setting as an emulation of a 1958 Fender™ Champ™.

tomjen3• 15 years ago

I grew up in the tail start the generation who doesn't understand copyright (though I do, having been a rapid FSF supporter).

The thing is copyright no longer makes sense. It used to, but today we have so many movies, tv shows, albums and books that you couldn't possibly read/watch/hear just one tenth of one percent of them in your entire lifetime even if you did nothing else. Copyright was supposed to enable society to be enriched. The constitution doesn't demand that congress make a copyright law, it merely enables it to do so. The moment the public no longer believes that copyright is likely to benefit it, it can simply stop offering it.

So that nobody makes the argument that you take away their property or that the owners somehow has a moral right to it. Nobody is taking their property away from them. What we take away is the (temporary) monopoly they were granted.

And we could properly still put limitations on the commercial use of copyrighted works -- if that had been used as an example, a lot more hands would have gone up among the students.

muuh-gnu3• 15 years ago

> The thing is copyright no longer makes sense.

From a democratic point of view, it doesnt even _matter_ whether it makes sense or not. The only thing that matters is whether we, as a society, collectively _want_ private, non-commercial copying (i.e. filesharing) to be illegal or not.

Knowing that "we" probably would make non-commercial copying legal, "they" simply do not let us vote on it. Copyright is basically locked out of any democratic decision process, worldwide. Basically all existing political parties shield copyright away from democratic influence like a sanctum.

Only in the recent 2-3 years, in a number of european countries, people have realized that voting on this issue in the current system will basically forever be impossible and have formed pirate parties focused solely on getting rid of the filesharing prohibition.

Jugglernaut• 15 years ago

Seeing as it is legal to share files non-commercially in Switzerland I'd say that worldwide is a stretch.

It's also getting there in other countries. The momentum is behind the sharing, not behind the institutions upholding the barricades.

cabalamat• 15 years ago

> people have realized that voting on this issue in the current system will basically forever be impossible and have formed pirate parties focused solely on getting rid of the filesharing prohibition.

"Solely" would be an exaggeration. The filesharing issue is merely one issue -- albeit a very prominent one -- where governments have acted in the interests of big business not the electorate.

Pirates also care about:

- abuse of idea/infomation monopolies such as patents on drugs and software

- other areas where governments are infringing people's digital rights, e.g. spying on people's communications using the excuse of terrorism and pedophilia

- Pirates appreciate that a root cause is that governments do what big business wants, therefore want to get money out of politics and strengthen democracy

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

"What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")"

If there is any way I can encourage these young people to run for office and do public service I will do it. We need to turn this thought experiment into reality, get people into the gears and sockets of our society that have 'grown up' digital and understand it. I agree with the author that this would really help rationalize some of the copyright and patent madness.

muuh-gnu3• 15 years ago

> encourage these young people to run for office

Which is raising another, more underlying problem: Why do we as a society have no means to change stuff by voting on it, like in a, as it is called, "democracy"? Why is the only practicable way to change something like the filesharing prohibition, as you suggest, to give up everything else and run for a political office?

> We need to turn this thought experiment into reality, get people into the gears and sockets of our society

What you're suggesting is basically trying to inject "our" people into the ruling caste because it is completely decoupled from the ruled one. I'd rather say that we simply need significantly more democracy.

flyt• 15 years ago

After seeing the California initiative system up close for the last few years I would disagree that this improves matters.

Karellen• 15 years ago

How about if you run for office and do public service? Encourage by example. Even if you don't encourage that many people, you can be a part of "turn[ing] this thought experiment into reality".

georgieporgie3• 15 years ago

People like to say that "kids these days" don't understand copyright, but the fact is that hardly anyone of any age understands copyright. Back in the 90's, people in their 40's and older blindly retold the fable that you didn't have to pay for shareware, regardless of what the EULA stated. I had a friend whose father was a lawyer, who had the largest collection of illegally copied VHS tapes I've ever seen. They insisted it was legal because they weren't distributing, which is nonsense.

The only thing new about the phenomenon is the ease with which a greater variety of media is now shifted around digitally.

derleth9• 15 years ago

> the largest collection of illegally copied VHS tapes I've ever seen. They insisted it was legal because they weren't distributing, which is nonsense.

To expand on this: The only legal way to record copyrighted material is to do it to time-shift, meaning you record it, watch it once, and then destroy the copy. That is it.

This was settled in the Supreme Court case Sony v Universal, back when 'Sony' meant 'Betamax', as detailed in this page:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/464_US_417.htm

drewcrawford• 15 years ago

> The only legal way to record copyrighted material is to do it to time-shift,

This is simply not true. It's the same type of ignorance the OP is complaining about. Just to start with, fair use exceptions. Not to mention we've carved out custom exceptions for education, disabled people, etc. etc.

Or just read Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_and_exceptions_to_c...

Granted, they're a lot narrower than normal people believe they are. But they're a lot wider than "only one exception", and both mental models are equally incorrect.

ugh3• 15 years ago

Exactly. Copyright used to be something that concerned companies or professional creators of content. Normal people didn’t have to deal with it. It just never happened. (I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons why copyright law is so complicated. Companies can afford lawyers. Lawyers can deal with complicated laws.)

Copying is cheap now, as is publishing. Everyone can easily infringe copyright now, something that just wasn’t possible only twenty years ago.

My hypothesis is that people never understood copyright – they never had to – and now we are living in a world in which everyone can infringe copyright and hardly anyone understands what it is.

a3camero2• 15 years ago

It's hardly a surprise that people don't know how Copyright law works. People don't understand any major aspect of our legal systems. The rules are so incredibly complicated that even lawyers who specialize in these areas may not understand them and may even disagree on what the rules are (this is is where at least some litigation comes from, people disagree on what the rules are that applies to the situation).

I'd be surprised if most renters knew what the laws about renting are, despite most of the rules being written out and not squirreled away in court cases (re: case law) and renting being a major expense they incur every month.

dangrossman• 15 years ago

My 52 year old mother recently asked me "do you really have a copyright?" after seeing the notice at the bottom of a website I was showing her.

freehunter2• 15 years ago

I know it took me a long time to understand that copyright was something you have implicitly compared to something you had to prove and earn.

pbhjpbhj4• 15 years ago

You used to have to register directly for a work to be Copyright. The US I gather was one of, if not the, last place to stop doing that when they were added to the already well established Berne countries that under that same convention don't require registration.

However, internally I think the US still require registration for US citizens to sue other US citizens for infringement. Why? Must be making someone rich ...

uxp• 15 years ago

> They insisted it was legal because they weren't distributing, which is nonsense.

There is some actual truth in this of which I can only explain anecdotally, and am slightly wary of posting this story as last time I did on HN someone personally attacked me as being stupid, but never explained how I was wrong. I've even searched for the truth on the matter, but as I'm not a lawyer I've only found explanations of the grey area that supports both arguments.

Anyways, before I became a full time software developer I actually was a watchmaker, trained by a Swiss organization in partnership with a few major Swiss watch manufacturer companies. One of those companies is probably the most well known luxury watch brand in the world, of which they invited our class to their repair facility in Midtown Manhattan. The person that walked us through the facility was the president of after sales service himself. Upon visiting the area where they receive watches for repair, he remarked on how many imitation watches they receive per day (which is quite a bit more than I would have guessed). When asked on what they do with them, he said they usually just send them back to the owner with a letter explaining the watch. But, globally they have a goal to determine origins and production facilities abroad that do make their living off of manufacturing counterfeit goods in order to shut them down. Most counterfeit watches come from very few factories, so when they do receive an imitation for service, they check certain manufacturing marks which easily categorized them into groups they have already seen. (As an aside, this company engraves the word "Switzerland" inside the caseback, where the vast majority of imitations reproduce this word with "Shitinrhand"). If they come across an imitation that is unique, or instead of being produced as an imitation, it is produced to be a "genuine replica" to be sold as original, they try to keep the watch.

This is where the story gets controversial. Even though the imitation infringes on both copyright and trademarks, they can't, by US Law, confiscate the watch flat out by refusing to return the watch to it's owner as that is theft. They first have to offer to buy the watch from the owner, and if the owner agrees to sell the watch (usually for a large sum), they can then refuse payment and keep the watch, as the loop hole is that the infringement is the transfer or sale of counterfeit goods, not the possession.

I'd also like to debunk or validate this argument, however until someone provides me with case stories or cites laws, I'll go ahead and trust the president of service at a multi-billion dollar company who told me this personally instead of someone on the internet calling me stupid and cite this as true, or at least the story that he told me.

TheAmazingIdiot• 15 years ago

I can completely believe that federal guidelines allow for that kind of shit. And I'd also be inclined to believe that there's some sort of criminal statute for possessing a counterfeit good. It's probably a felony, no less.

As per proving a sale, they'd better have something written or recorded. I'd be calling the cops damn quick if they tried something like that with me. Unless they have proof that I ageed to a sale, the loophole well, isn't.

Now about that user who insulted you, don't let it bother you. Just remember that Sturgeons law also applies to people.

pbhjpbhj4• 15 years ago

Perhaps it was "legal" but still "unlawful" as personal copying was tortuous whilst distribution was illegal under criminal law?

That is the lawyer can claim "it's legal" whilst knowing that they're acting unlawfully?

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1609/whats-the-diff...

(Perhaps someone with legal certification could confirm).

davekinkead2• 15 years ago

If anything, Id say its the kids who understand the normative justifications of copyright better than their elders.

As has been previously mentioned, there is a growing disjoint between the legal status of copyright laws and their moral underpinnings. "Kids these days" are still acting within a moral framework of do not harm even while downloading.

GHFigs2• 15 years ago

Why not make your own film?

derleth9• 15 years ago

This is completely orthogonal to the discussion.

GHFigs2• 15 years ago

Given that the answer most certainly is not "because it's illegal" or "because the media companies won't let me", I think it's at least worth considering.

HN evidently doesn't agree, so I'll leave it at that.

bambax• 15 years ago

> What happens when a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")

Yes, that's exactly what happens: nothing. The US has had (publicly confessed) former drug users as presidents for over a decade and a half now, and look at how it changed the "War on drugs": if anything, it intensified.

This is just wishful thinking.

joejohnson2• 15 years ago

The War on Drugs is not a good analog for IP laws. As difficult as it is for the government to effectively ban substances, it is much, much harder to prevent people from sharing files over the internet.

The War on Drugs is incredibly ineffective, but not nearly as ineffective as any technical "solution" to piracy that would make it impossible for people to share files. Sharing files _is_ the internet. As long as people can connect their computers, almost at will, there will be ways for them to share copyrighted material.

notatoad• 15 years ago

It's a perfect analog, politically. The war on drugs is fought much more vigorously than it should be, considering how much good it does or how much public support it has, because it is very profitable for some powerful lobby groups. The fight against piracy, same thing.

Tycho• 15 years ago

You can rip-off the labour of hard-working artists, but eventually something has to give.

zokier3• 15 years ago

I think this is a failing of society (parents and schools) to educate children of basic ideas off laws that govern them. I don't mean that the copyright code should be explained in full for every child, but the basic premise that you shouldn't distribute anything you haven't created yourself from scratch.

billpatrianakos8• 15 years ago

Woah! Watch out! You said something unpopular around these parts with that last sentence. I'm seeing so many people believing that it actually is okay to distribute something you haven't made from scratch. I don't know why but I do suspect that they don't think of is as "distributing something you haven't created yourself from scratch". I've seen so many times in these discussions people defend pirating and saying that all software should be free and then there's excuses like "pirated works are just free marketing" and "well they wouldn't have bought it anyway".

It's very hard to explain why copyright infringement is not okay to people these days because the physical analogies no longer apply. People think theft is when you take something and deprive someone else of that thing. With digital media you're taking something but the creator still has it and that's where things get messy. But just because the author still has the original copy that doesn't mean that it's still okay to take. Then you get into the whole argument about how whichever industry (music, movies, whatever) are so rich and greedy and screw people that it's okay. True or not, it still doesn't change what's wrong with this stuff.

zokier3• 15 years ago

Actually what I meant was that legally you shouldn't distribute stuff that's not made by you. While I myself am somewhat pro-copyright, I also respect other peoples anti-copyright opinions. But I think that even anti-copyright people should follow the law, and keep advocating changes to the law if they feel that law and their views do not align. That doesn't mean that I think people should blindly follow laws, but rather see following law as a temporary concession.

Zirro• 15 years ago

"True or not, it still doesn't change what's wrong with this stuff."

There's something missing here. What's wrong with this stuff?

icebraining6• 15 years ago

Even if we take the premise that it's not okay to distribute something you haven't made from scratch, there's still the issue of whether that should be enforced legally or not.

davekinkead2• 15 years ago

Did you create any of the following posts? http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zokier

A hyperlink is a form of distribution so you may want to clarify what you mean by 'you shouldn't distribute anything you haven't created yourself from scratch.'

rospaya• 15 years ago

> What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")

Just like the generation that smoked but didn't inhale changed everything about that, right?

jamesbritt• 15 years ago

Just like the generation that smoked but didn't inhale changed everything about that, right?

It brings to mind the saying, "People become conservative as soon as they have something to conserve."

joejohnson2• 15 years ago

>> Judging by his username, I'm guessing crimewriter95 is 16 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if most of those million videos were uploaded by people under 21.

That's a pretty lame assumption.

esrauch• 15 years ago

The assumption is because of the 95 on the username, which is a strong indicator that the author was born in 1995.

It sounds like you misunderstood and thought he was merely saying that it sounds like a childish username, which he was not. If the username was crimewriter65 it would be strongly indicating that he was 46 years old.

tibbon• 15 years ago

Why do schools and parents teach nothing about copyright laws? We're so obsessed with teaching our kids about drugs and drug laws (DARE), yet the potential punishment for intentional copyright infringement is much higher than being caught with a joint.

I do not agree with current copyright laws, but they do exist. Citizens need to have a better understanding the laws if we ever hope to have them changed.

Many people seem to be incredibly willfully ignorant about copyright stuff.

freehunter2• 15 years ago

I know that personally I would be happier (as a relative term) being charged in a criminal suit such as having a joint than to be tried civilly as a file sharer. Having to pay a $250,000 fine would do just as much damage to my future as trying to get a job as a convicted felon. I'd be paying the price for the rest of my life anyway.

morganw• 15 years ago

> Why do schools and parents teach nothing about copyright laws?

cmcewen• 15 years ago

If anybody has the time, I suggest reading Against Intellectual Monopoly. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm. It's a fairly well thought out and well researched argument for the abolition of copyright. There are a few examples of how people can still make money off of content that anyone can access.

The basic premise is that the content creator has the advantage of releasing the material, and therefore can leverage it for profit even though others can copy the material.

njharman• 15 years ago

In regards to "kids these days" and

> What happens when a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate

Not shit.

I grew up several generations ago. We all made mix tapes, violated copyright with our VHS and Betamax recorders, Xerox machines, etc.

Then we grew up and most of us discovered we liked money and so sold out to anyone including copyright cartel who would give us a share of their take.

No Copyright Intended

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