Copyright Infringement

Why should copyright infringement be illegal?

I'd love for there to be no police. That way I could have my own private security force that actually treats me like a customer and if I don't like their service I can go with one of their competitors.

As for the social contract nonsense, that's been discredited since Hume.

I'm no more a party to a social contract than the poor bastard that finds himself in the middle of the ocean. I'm sure you would drive us into the sea with tanks if you could but that's not a serious offer.

Night Ripper wrote:

Why should copyright infringement be illegal?

Because property in copiable ideas, like property in anything else, provides an incentive to produce value. Abolishing copyright would reduce the amount of intellectual assets people produce.

Now, I'll grant you that the case for intellectual property, including copyright, is weaker than the case for property in manufactured goods. Property rights in manufactured goods have the additional advantage of allocating goods to the people who value it most. That's not the case for valuables who can be copied cheaply. There the optimal allocation of goods, once they're produced is to everyone who values them at all.

But that's only an argument for intellectual property rights being weaker than physical property rights. The incentive to produce still justifies that there be some property rights to people's intellectual work. And that includes property rights.

Creation/production has nothing to do with property rights. Otherwise I could steal a block of metal from you and make a sword from it and have that sword be mine.

I'm the one who dealt with this stuff in real life, however boring I am. You are all poseurs prancing, to me.

Oh, but wait, I'm boring.

Why on earth would you just dump on me?Just as I was posting, I saw my post as zeroed.

Whatever.

Wrong. They were paid for the ORIGINAL work or PERFORMANCES of their work. They were never paid for COPIES which is what I'm arguing against.

They BOUGHT sheet music which required the composer's consent.

Haha, as a software developer that makes his living off of intellectual property, I think you're basically full of it. I'm sure I have more to lose than any of you from piracy but I think there are more important things than protecting my bottom line, i.e. individual liberty.

I would rather have my business drop to nothing and be forced to find a different line of work than be part of the currently corrupt system. Luckily, I have found other ways to keep my business afloat without threatening people with the law.

Not that it should matter. We all have equally valid opinions.

It has nothing to do with the industry and everything to do with the law. If I am an indie artist and you infringe on my copyrights, I can have you locked in the same rape dungeons as the RIAA. You should read more than the first sentence of a post before responding.

Don't assume you are the only software developer in the discussion, much less that you are the one with the most to lose from piracy.

Out of purely technical curiosity can you expound on those other ways? Is all your code open-source?

parados wrote:

They BOUGHT sheet music which required the composer's consent.

Do you have any credible sources to back up this ridiculous claim?

I read your profile and know what your profession is but I seriously doubt you make as much as I do.

I make it more attractive to pay for my software than to get it for free. If you download my software for free then you have to worry about cracking it yourself or hoping that the crack you downloaded didn't include a trojan horse.

Most people find my software useful and reasonably priced so they are willing to buy it rather than risk getting infected or jumping through hoops looking for a crack every time a new version comes out.

Of course, all of this could fail and I would simply walk away or devote less time to it in proportion to how much less I am making off of it.

Night Ripper wrote:

parados wrote:

They BOUGHT sheet music which required the composer's consent.

Do you have any credible sources to back up this ridiculous claim?

Do you think they just downloaded it?

Why do they have to crack it? Why don't you give it away for free? Sincere question, why don't you give it to them and let them choose whether or not they should pay, just like you are advocating that others do with their intellectual property (or lock it up in a basement).

ossobuco wrote:

I'm the one who dealt with this stuff in real life, however boring I am. You are all poseurs prancing, to me.

Oh, but wait, I'm boring.

Why on earth would you just dump on me?Just as I was posting, I saw my post as zeroed.

Whatever.

Haha, as a software developer that makes his living off of intellectual property, I think you're basically full of it. I'm sure I have more to lose than any of you from piracy but I think there are more important things than protecting my bottom line, i.e. individual liberty. I would rather have my business drop to nothing and be forced to find a different line of work than be part of the currently corrupt system. Luckily, I have found other ways to keep my business afloat without threatening people with the law.

Not that it should matter. We all have equally valid opinions.

Knight Ripper---

I'm not interested in interfering with your ego, and with your apparent desire to parade it around in this thread. So instead of arguing with you directly, let me just point you to a text by an author who shares your outlook on property, almost shares your perspective on the state, and uses this intellectual framework to make a case for intellectual property rights based on this view. The source is Ayn Rand: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Chapter 11: Patents and Copyrights. Enjoy!