Megaupload, SHUT DOWN!

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I don't disagree with you--the future of the industy lies in harnessing the internet. But that's not the position that posters like blauSamstag, Oodain and Beauty_pact were propounding.

Why is it that so few people are willing to look for the middle ground?

Fact is this - if people are downloading lots of stuff for free, yet they were previously willing to pay for this stuff, market failure has occurred, so it's up to the market to sort it out. We shouldn't have the government stepping in to protect massive monopolies. That's just corruption.

based on what excactly??

do you even know what my stance is beyond "not the same as yours"?

Of course I don't. That's why I never made any claim about your stance. All I referred to was the position that you propounded, which must, in the absence of clarification, stand for itself.



Is hardly an argument that demonstrates a great deal of willingness to take on board new approaches to reconciling intellectual property rights, consumer interests and free expression.

Intellectual property is exactly what moves us forward as a species, because it incentivizes creativity and innovation. Now you rightly complain that the current system of enforcing copyright is flawed--but that does not mean that the concept of intellectual property is flawed.

You also correctly point out that an artist may profit better from a "loss leader" approach to promotion. But that does not mean that all artists could profit from such a system were it universal. The marketplace must, I suggest, remain open for both buyers and sellers to create the best exchanges of value. If giving away a freebie does that, then by all means, let artists do so. But that decision must always remain with the artists, because they are the owners of their work, and any system which purports to change that is taking a retrograde step.

did you read the SOPA thread in the tech section of WP,

i have never said there shouldnt be compensation, what i did say in that thread was we sjould compensate for the service of the writer and not the writing itself.

But that's an argument for mediocrity. If I get paid for writing no matter what kind of dreck I produce, then where's my incentive to put in the time and effort to write something good?

If my writing is dreck, and my neighbors writing is wildly popular, why should I get the same compensation as he?

no one said quality or quantity shouldnt be taken into consideration,

nor that they should not be able to have a say in how much they charge for said service.


is quantity any measure of quality?

the only way an artist today makes more is by reaching a larger audience, does this automatically make that music good?

Well, at the risk of spinning this thread wildly off-topic, I can think of one area where at present it isin fact flawed: the length of time books, artwork, music, etc., remain under the control of the -- for lack of a better term, I'll use -- "content producer" and/or their estate when they pass away. And this is a relatively recent phenomenon, when it dawned on some people in the '90s that Mickey Mouse (or at any rate some of the early films), the novel Gone With the Wind, and a whole slew of related stuff were all about to enter into the public domain.

I think the late Sonny Bono -- how surreal is it that he was in Congress? -- was on record as saying something like "Well, I know copyright isn't supposed to last forever, but if I could figure out a way to make it infinity minus one day, I would." He didn't get that but he and his cohort have extended the "protected" period for this stuff beyond anything reasonable, and somehow have gotten most of the world to go along.

If I believed in something like karma I'd say the proliferation of file sharing, bit torrent type sites is karmic payback for this increase in time from entering the public domain the entertainment industry essentially rammed down everyone's throats. I'm pretty certain it was nothing the US founders intended, at any rate.

Anyway, sorry for the O/T post. But I think at least that aspect of current copyright law does nothing to help "creativity and innovation." It in fact stifles it by keeping a wide range of intellectual property locked up for what amounts to two or three generations.

intellectual proterty is a modern concept, before it there certainly was some exclusive technologies but mostly through secrecy,
now we can argue how the concept is flawed but you are right in that there would always be some shape or form of it, there should be.

now i wont pretend i know how to make a system that simply works, no one does,
but most "intellectual property" dont hold their greatest value in pure market value, but in how they inspire others .
now some hold market value directly, most because of a physical object, something that can always be traded in a traditional sense.
then we move into the area of controlling and owning actual physical thought, something i find to be impossible in any practical sense

now in essence i would say we should abandon the concept of traditional copyright on the internet and for digital media, indeed the very essence of "owning thoughts and ideas" simply doesnt hold up to reality as no one can ever be sure of anothers thought process, in essence were we to take the same strict aproach to analog media as we did digital it should be illegal to lend one of your books to another person unless they have a license to read that exact work (in current law i think that is worked around by binding the "license" to the physical object, but wouldnt that mean that i should be able to freely share any music i am not currently listening to to someone else temporarily?)
now none of this is to say no compensation should be given, i think i made that all too clear, it does mean we should find alternatives(and again in reality they would mostly be hybrids between the "lawless" internet and the analog world)

BS. There is no concept such as intellectual property. It is just a propaganda term to encompass three things that are ridiculously unrelated to each other. Copyright, patents and trademarks.

So I'll ask you to stop using confusing terms such as IP when discussing it makes it sound all fine and dandy whilst not specifying what are you taking about.

So, let me dissect your argument that intellectual property is "exactly" what moves us forward as a species.

Did you mean copyright moves us forward as a species? Copyright certainly is useful albeit current over abused and the expiration time is excessive. But as our species has made a lot of progress before it existed, then saying that "copyright" moves us forward as a species is complete non-sense.

Patents? The idea that people actually can own ideas is the most absurd unrealistic fabrication ever. There were great inventions before patents and, worse, it is clear to me that just about any invention actually copies something. There is no such thing as 100% originality.

More so, although propagandists would love us to believe that patents promote innovation, it seems to be factually the opposite. Ever since software patents were introduced there has been little innovation in software in comparison to before. What we do have is lawyers profitting like heck.

Trademarks? I doubt you really meant that trademarks move us forward as a species. Besides, rather than "property", a trademark is supposed to protect consumers by letting them be sure who they are getting their product from.

If you bothered to think critically you would realize that all three are, in fact, very closely related to each other. All these intellectual property concepts serve to protect the creative work of individuals from unlicensed use by others. Intellectual property differs from real and personal property in three important ways:

1) The property being protected is intangible
2) The property can be reproduced an unlimited number of times
3) Rights holders are entitled to a monopolistic control of the work that they have created for a limited term of years.

The three require different treatment, though. If I develop software under the name "Mikrosoft," I have not violated anyone's copyright, because copyright is limited to duplication of the actual words, music, images, etc. created by the original author. Trademarks are more broadly protected because trademarks are protected from usages that are reasonably likely to be confused with the mark. Trade mark developed as a separate area precisely because copyright law was insufficient to the task.



Happily. I think it's pointless, but if you prefer to discuss, copyright, trademark and patent instead of intellectual property, so be it.



Read my original post. You may have legitimate issues over how copyright is enforced--but that does not mean that copyright is invalid as a concept.

Copyrights were conceived in the immediate aftermath of the development of movable type. Prior to the invention of movabale type, the reproduction of an author's work was so costly and so time consuming that authors' interest in copying was limited. But once authors could sell multiple copies of their work, they faced loss of income from printers reproducing their work without compensation.

Copyright gives authors a means to earn a living from their writing, composers a means to earn a living from their music, and artists a means to earn a living from their creations. How can incentivizing artists to dedicate themselves to their creativity be seen as anything other than the advancement of the species?



Again, it's a question of incentive. In the period before patents, how did inventors support themselves? Most had patronage, being supported by kings or other governments, and many of them were granted monopolies long before patents were created. In fact, the word "patent" comes from the name of the english legal document, "Letters Patent" which was the vehicle by which the King in Council made information public (such as granting a person a monopoly).

The mechanisms of patent protection can be the subject of significant criticism. Finding the balance between rewarding invention and disseminating invention is a difficult balance to find. We don't always do it right. But that's not the same thing as saying that inventors should not be rewarded for their work.

Much of invention is improvement on existing technology, to be sure. But innovation is the enging of economic change, whether it is completely new, or merely better. The latter is no less creative than the former.



How much value in our economy is based on business' investment in "brand." Certainly, on the face of it, the Xerox logo is pretty irrelevant to human development. But in our sophisticated, industrialized societies, trademark is part of the larger commercial system that has created the world we live in now.

Is it perfect? Of course not. But you've made no cogent case that copyright, patent and trademark are not worth protecting at some level.