Oatmealing and the new practice of ethical bittorenting

a huge chunk of my beloved Baroque music wouldn't exist without patrons of the arts

buying instead of copying makes someone a patron

This gap between the law and what people see, feel and experience in real life is a problem

violate the rights of the masses

One of the obvious problems is that it suggests that every “stolen copy” is a lost sale.

If people want it it has value. If it has value then it is theft.

copying makes you a thief of the artist's work

So let's pretend I counterfeit only enough money to buy a movie ticket, or I counterfeit concert tickets that I only use for my own admission to whatever event.

The venue isn't losing anything by my counterfeiting?

The balance in their bank account is NOT the same. It is less than the price of my admission to the event.

By this standard, breathing would be theft: you want air, it has value to you, and yet you're not paying for it. This can't be the right standard.

The desire and motivation to create something isn't driven by copyright but the copyright is necessary to the artists survival as a creator.

The desire and motivation to create something isn't driven by copyright but the copyright is necessary to the artists survival as a creator.

So let's pretend I counterfeit only enough money to buy a movie ticket, or I counterfeit concert tickets that I only use for my own admission to whatever event.

Something that is often left out of copyright discussions is that the purpose of copyright is to benefit the public.

[Congress shall have the Power. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Let's talk to those designers about how they have been effected by forgery.

Quote:

By this standard, breathing would be theft: you want air, it has value to you, and yet you're not paying for it. This can't be the right standard.

There is a difference between want and need.

WHEN Parliament decided, in 1709, to create a law that would protect books from piracy, the London-based publishers and booksellers who had been pushing for such protection were overjoyed. When Queen Anne gave her assent on April 10th the following year—300 years ago this week—to “An act for the encouragement of learning” they were less enthused. Parliament had given them rights, but it had set a time limit on them: 21 years for books already in print and 14 years for new ones, with an additional 14 years if the author was still alive when the first term ran out. After that, the material would enter the public domain so that anyone could reproduce it. The lawmakers intended thus to balance the incentive to create with the interest that society has in free access to knowledge and art. The Statute of Anne thus helped nurture and channel the spate of inventiveness that Enlightenment society and its successors have since enjoyed.

Over the past 50 years, however, that balance has shifted. Largely thanks to the entertainment industry’s lawyers and lobbyists, copyright’s scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years’ protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”. They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.

...

The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable, however. Authors and artists do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick up pen or paintbrush. And overlong copyrights often limit, rather than encourage, a work’s dissemination, impact and influence.

...

The question is how such a deal can be made equitably. At the moment, the terms of trade favour publishers too much. A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable. If there is a case for longer terms, they should be on a renewal basis, so that content is not locked up automatically. The value society places on creativity means that fair use needs to be expanded and inadvertent infringement should be minimally penalised. None of this should get in the way of the enforcement of copyright, which remains a vital tool in the encouragement of learning. But tools are not ends in themselves.