Comment by LiamPowell 2 days ago
There's also the piracy communities where a majority of users believe they have some sort of inherent right to watch something merely because it exists. I don't understand where that sentiment comes from.
That should be the default assumption. It's restrictions which require justification in a liberal society, not freedoms.
Freedoms are a balancing of rights between two or more parties, and are never absolute. Complicating the matter futher: it is very unlikely that all parties are going to agree what that balancing of rights looks like. For example, someone who shares knowledge (e.g. a teacher) is going to have a very different perspective on copyright law than a person who sells knowlege (e.g. a publisher).
Yeah yeah, but the one I replied to couldn't understand why people felt entitled to see something just because it exists.
I can totally understand that, it just means they don't buy the various excuses for why they shouldn't be allowed to. I wouldn't either, in most "lost media" cases.
Where did that come from? 'You aren't allowed to prevent others from sharing this thing' is completely different from 'you have to share this thing'. 'Everyone is allowed to share everything' is a freedom, not a restriction.
Whether or not it's a freedom people should have is a difficult question to answer because we don't know what the modern world would be like without copyright (I expect creators would try and get paid for creating more works so it might look like how nowadays some shows end in cliffhangers to give the creators some leverage over the publishers to say 'look, people want to know what comes next, maybe you should let us do another season').
Not only are you being disingenous by generalizing to "anything that exists" (when for the immense majority is "anything you put up for sale", it's just Mossad that wants your family vaction photos), but here's the thing: I do have that right. By default. It might make you unhappy, but I have it. It crosses into a different territory if I deprive you from it (theft), or if the only I would have had to acquired it would be to buy a copy from you(piracy), but ultimately, as a society, we've decided that harming you for it is a line not to be crossed.
I have every right to see a thing. Just like you have every right to try to stop me from doing so. The general rule is that we shouldn't hurt eachother trying to do it/prevent it.
I mean, part of the deal with IP law is you get government protection for your idea, in exchange for society having access to it.
I’m personally of the mind that if my tax dollars went towards protecting your shit, you owe society access.
This is not defending the ones who believe they have the right to things sans that deal
Without IP law it is all or nothing: obfuscate, hide, encrypt, and protect lest it become public domain.
With IP law you are given the exclusive, enforceable right to control the distribution and sale of an idea for N years... at which point it becomes public domain.
In either case the decision to publish an idea will inevitably make it public domain. The government protects their shit because $REASONS but there is absolutely no obligation for it to be made public until that protection lapse. In matters of human culture this seems like a bug, not a feature but enforcing some standard of "reasonable worldwide availability" by force seems impossible. The invisible hand of piracy "solves" this oversight and functions like a safety valve.
Not an endorsement of either side, just an observation.
A british man predicted this was going to happen nearly two centuries ago. His address to the courts are worth reading in their entirety, it contains everything we need to know about copyright.
https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyr...
> At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. [...] Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end.
> Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly
> Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law
> Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit
> and the whole nation will be in the plot
> when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop
> The public seldom makes nice distinctions
> The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create
This argument is so ridiculous I must be misunderstanding you.
By your logic you owe me access your house since my tax dollars pay for the legal system that gives you property rights?!
Actually you do owe society your house. We settled on yearly property taxes to pay for what is owed to society for the protection of that property.
I am not aware of any type of IP enforced in the US that comes with a yearly taxed based on the value of the IP. If one exists, please let me know.
Assuming you're american: you already do.
While the US Army isn't allowed to use your house in peace time, if it has any tactical value in war time, it can and will have access to your house. The US Army is the personification of the tax dollars of GP, through the government.
Because of the US's relationship with personal property, it has been decided that only the worst case scenarios lead to these rights being "shared", but on less important subjects, especially ones that cost you nothing in the case of having a copy of your work made, yes. Things like the Audio Home Recording Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act) make it legal for me to make a copy of your work. What happens with this copy depends, maybe I'll share it with friends (and in this case, IP law will consider it minor enough that they won't care), maybe I'll resell it and make money from it (which IP law definitely considers a big no no).
You must be naive if you believe that you have any right to both benefit from public protection _and_ keep full control over how <thing> gets used.
It's not ridiculous, that's the deal (at least it was). It's not actual property. It's a made up concept, you actually lose nothing physical if it's copied. That concept was created and granted to encourage people to create.
You get a certain period to commercialize it, then it's public property. Hiding it away to prevent that is a breach of the spirit of the agreement society made with the creator.
That you believe it's a "ridiculous" argument shows how much you've been brainwashed by corporations.
All this stuff is generally built on the shoulders of previous works, that are public domain. Copying story structures, phrasing, etc. Even entire storylines.
And that's before we get onto the fact that all these corporations benefited from eveything we paid for. Laws to protect their IP, enforcement, infrastructure paid with by public money, education of workers, etc..
They've got their hands out to take, take, take, but when it comes to holding up to their part of the bargain, it's suddenly extensions on copyright terms, minor tweaks to "renew" IP that was never part of the original deal, etc. while feeding a ton of cash to politicians in what looks like a bribe, acts like a bribe, but is termed "lobbying".
Physical property rights are made up too. How can you claim to own something if you aren’t actively defending it nor physically possessing it in that moment.
Do you “own” your house even when you’re not home? Yes, you do, because we all agreed on this made up thing called “property rights” and we pay our tax dollars to have it enforced. Otherwise whoever is in your house “owns” it until you or someone else forcible removes them or convinces them to leave.
All our rules are “made up”.
>It's a made up concept
Physical property is made up too. You don't lose anything from someone sleeping on your couch either.
> if my tax dollars went towards protecting your shit, you owe society access
Well, the protection is only from random people accessing one's stuff, so this is a very silly (in fact nonsensical) argument. "If my tax dollars went towards you having right X, I thus deserve to infringe on that right X".
> I’m personally of the mind that if my tax dollars went towards protecting your shit, you owe society access.
Our tax dollars go towards protecting lots of different things for lots of different people (including me and you) that we have no rights to at all, nor ever will.
Intellectual properties are temporary. Patents and copyrights expire and enter the public domain.
The social contract is we all pretend we can't trivially copy their works for a couple decades so they can turn a profit and then the works enter the public domain.
The constant extensions of copyright duration clearly demonstrate that the copyright industry has no intention to fulfill their end of the deal. They have systematically robbed us of our public domain rights and become rent seekers.
> I don't understand where that sentiment comes from.
If you actually wish to understand, I can point to a thread where this was discussed somewhat at length by others and myself not too long ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44907830
TL;DR:
Public domain is the natural state of information. Intellectual property is an absurd state granted monopoly on what boils down to numbers. Copyright in particular is a functionally infinite monopoly that robs us of our public domain rights. Copyright infringement is civil disobedience of unjust laws and arguably a moral imperative. Copyright enforcement requires the destruction of computer freedom as we know it as well as everything the word "hacker" stands for and therefore it must be resisted even if it destroys the copyright industry. It makes zero economic sense to charge money for information which has infinite availability, therefore society must figure out how to pay creators before the work is produced.
> I don't understand where that sentiment comes from.
Human nature. Refusing to accept being told "no" by some greater force is the instinct that pushed humanity forward to where we are today.