Piracy

You're living in fantasy land. Access to legal representation is limited or denied on an economic basis. Access to plentiful and nutritious food is limited or denied on an economic basis. Access to the internet is limited or denied on an economic basis. Your paean to "the internet age" reads like naïve science fiction.

Ha ha ha.

If you download my book without paying for it, I will sue your thieving ass.

It is the basis of what Aaron Swartz went to prison for and ultimately died for. Be it Academic works who no one ever sees because of the outrageous cost in purchasing such documents online or the new Wu Tang Album ... it makes no difference... This is not fantasy land it's actually supply and demand, let me explain...

The internet has created markets in regions of the world that never before had access to the types of media you and I take for granted as a part of capitalism. More viewers of media (of all types) increases the audience that any form of art form has therefore increasing the value of the gross product of art being produced in that media type. Another result is there are more artists producing media and more artists and production companies have found more alternative ways to make a profit from the sale and marketing of media online.

With more artists producing more media to a larger audience this creates a larger spread of profits, having the effect of dramatically reducing the mainstream profits of multimillion dollar publicist and agent firms out of hollywood or other music capitals (for example). However, this has another beneficial effect of putting more of the profits back into the hands of those who produce the art and out of the hands of those who merely promote it.

I can go on but lets first see what these new revelations may bring to light for you.

That entire range of things of things now called piracy is theft. It's nothing but a way of making theft sound cute.

If you want to see piracy, take a boat ride out where the Red Sea meets Somalia.

I'd rather watch Black Sails.

I have a two points for you for you Roger. This is the definition of Theft or Stealing... take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.

How can one return something which was never actually stolen?

The answer is simple, you can't return what was never stolen therefore it is not stealing.

If no profit is made and the media is simply consumed and discarded like... Say, some water from a river which is on land that is not yours... How can one claim they were wronged? There is neither economic gain nor economic loss on either side except of course, to use the aforementioned analogy, the claims of the water bottling company who has a marked decrease in sales.

To believe that such a philosophy would lead to the end of all intellectual property to come is bad faith. It represents the false revelation that exists for any commercial artist, that profit dictates success, ingenuity, or anything close. Profit CAN signify one's acclaim, their influence and so can popularity. However, for anyone who produces intellectual property yet holds the view that the free distribution of their work would hurt their potential for success contradicts the very potential of profit's significance and meaning. Popularity, influence, and widespread acclaim all open doors for profit...

Piracy is not a cute word for theft but a word coined by thieves.

None of which blather alters that people's access to any necessity or desire is limited or denied on an economic basis. Dream on . . .

Call it blather or a dream ... It doesn't change the truth and to me it's writing about the way the internet should be perceived ... The internet is the evolution of the printing press in terms of communication and it's here to stay, it has been around for hardly 30 years... It has the potential to transform our world's in many ways that have hardly begun to take shape, actually it's more than potential but it is the inevitable.

I don't sell my book for acclaim. If I get acclaim, it's a side benefit.

I sell my book (and don't give it away) because it's a commercial venture, a piece of intellectual property. I put time into it. My time is not free. My editor and publisher put time into it. Their time is not free. My cover artist put time into it. His time is not free. The publishing house is in an office where there's electricity and Internet and everything else that's in offices. None of that stuff is free.

Your initial premise is faulty (and it's tautological), that it can't be stealing if there's nothing to steal.

It is stealing; this is the product of labor just as much as a knitted sweater, a paved road, or an automobile. That stuff costs money and so does intellectual property.

If I have a legal right to sell something, and someone else takes it without paying, that is stealing. The rest is just word games.

Based on the definition of theft, stealing requires taking something for personal gain without returning it. There is nothing to TAKE, no CD, no DVD, only data which cannot be returned without replacing the original file. By the very definition of what qualifies something as being stolen, internet piracy is not theft.

But hey, the bible is just a book of word games too, the U.S. constitution, brilliant quotes from scientists... All word games, there is not any truth in any of those stringings of blathering words

The internet has been around for quite a while longer than 30 years, whether or not you know it. Initially, it cost quite a bit of money in telephone charges to access what was available--the original hackers were kids who broke into the phone company's computers so as to get access without being obliged to pay for it. That goes back 40 years or more, and there had to be something there in the first place to motivate the original hackers.

See Jespah's remarks on intellectual property. Before you start shoveling bullshit on that concept, the term was first used in the mid-18th century, and in its modern sense at the beginning of the 19th century. It was the subject of international conventions on protecting intellectual property in the 1880s. Keep all that in mind as you make up your next set of fairy tales.

the public internet is all that's relevant here, any piracy of data back then was surely stealing because it would be used for financial gain

Jespah posted on this thread and he didn't say much. I did a little reading on the origins of pirating intellectual property, it first began at the time of the printing press... As soon as their was mass produced intellectual property to pirate, it had begun and through the centuries it continued.

What you don't seem to understand is that modern day piracy, the majority of it is done through simple file sharing which is not for a profit. My entire stance is that if there is no concrete theft, if there is no profit that the pirate is attempting to exploit, than there is no crime. Any real artist would appreciate this fact and understand the simple premise that it costs money or effort to get an audience for any product they create. The larger their audience the larger their market for creating a profit from their work. Any wise honest would appreciate that their work is being viewed whether or not those views are paid or not.

Financially profiting off of someone else's work is another matter entirely and I don't condone it, even if that is indirect profit through the management of a website with advertisements (such is the state of things in spite of and because of the laws against file sharing).

Piracy has been used in regards to file-sharing by the thieves who have long profited off of the work of artists and many respectable individuals have been convinced that their art form, their individual acclaim, and their gross profits are being negated by piracy. File sharing hasn't only reduced the sales of individual artists, it has increased the amount of music that consumers have access to which in turn has reduced the desire to purchase a dated form of media. The success of entities such as I-tunes demonstrates that this change in access is preferred and not deleterious. They give the consumer the ability to support an artist with the same amount of ease as it takes to pirate their music.

It's a shame that so many like yourself want to keep the world of file sharing and 'legitimate' file selling in two corners of the internet. Let me tell you though that you are losing and this fairy tale is becoming true.

You steal Jespah's book and I guarantee she is going to sue your ass off.

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There's a reason there are law firms that specialize in suits related to theft of intellectual property.

You steal something that someone else has created and your ass will get chewed.

What if someone shared it with me and I did not pay, then I shared it with a friend. How is that stealing? It is another form of borrowing without having to return it because it was never taken to begin with. This is a product of technology, not the evolution of crime. Jespah would be lucky if someone like myself ever read a free copy of their book.

Look up the definition of theft and stealing, you will see that I am right.

Moreover, it's the beginning of a new era where consumers have more power to dictate the value of what they buy. Jespah may have written an awful book that is worthless compared to the work of art she will write in the future. If she would have allowed her audience to consume her worthless book for free she would have gained more recognition and once she produced a book that is worth monetary value to her audience she would be more successful.

I don't deny her the right to choose I simply make the argument that she has no legitimate claim against file sharers. Furthermore, this is a product of what we have with e-books and would be impossible to do with a physical book that has to be physically manufactured. Granted she may have contracts, editors, and publicists to attend to but quite frankly that is not the consumers burden to bear unless her creates that desire for them...

Yet she has a choice, a smaller audience now and in the future with larger monetary gain in the short term... Or more recognition now with less monetary gain and a larger boon to her audience for her future sales dreams.