The chickenfarmer's lament

[Reginald Ret]

I'm going to sleep and work afterwards btw, i will be back in about 15-16 hours.
Please don't assume i am avoiding conflict itt until 24 hours have passed.

That's a loss of potential income.
You do not have a right to potential income.

Okay, so it is your position that intellectual property does not exist?

Yes, but i consider loyalty and friendship of higher importance than my opinion on IP.
You won't have to worry about me abusing any of your work.
Philosphical talk is great fun, but not as important as real people.
I don't pirate from my friends if they don't want me to.

Also, you have the right to chase potential profit:  Nobody guarantees that people will buy your product.

But to have people take it without paying for it?  Theft.

Information does not act the same as physical produce.
Applying the same rules to both hurts at least one of them.
forcing people to treat the physical as information is bad (communism, where every physical thing must be shared by all)
and forcing people to treat information as a physical object is bad (we know how to make clean water and instead of sharing that with 3rd world countries, we will demand all their money in exchange for a limited right of use.)

[Doktor Howl]

Yes, but i consider loyalty and friendship of higher importance than my opinion on IP.
You won't have to worry about me abusing any of your work.
Philosphical talk is great fun, but not as important as real people.
I don't pirate from my friends if they don't want me to.

So pirating IS wrong?

Information does not act the same as physical produce.
Applying the same rules to both hurts at least one of them.

Bullshit.  If people cannot own their own body of work, and determine it's distribution, then why fucking bother?

forcing people to treat the physical as information is bad (communism, where every physical thing must be shared by all)

wut

and forcing people to treat information as a physical object is bad (we know how to make clean water and instead of sharing that with 3rd world countries, we will demand all their money in exchange for a limited right of use.)

3rd world countries don't know how to boil water?   

[Doktor Howl]

Let's just simplify this:  Inventors and artists are less than human, and can have their work exploited without compensation.  Because I want free stuff.

There.  The pro-piracy argument, stripped of all the bullshit rationalizations.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What you say would be more true if the artists and inventors were the ones profiting from selling reproductions of their work, rather than exploitative labels.

Musicians rarely profit from sales of their music. They profit from concerts. So yeah, in principle what you're saying is true, but in practice what Regret is saying is true, even though the chicken farmer metaphor doesn't work at all.

[Doktor Howl]

What you say would be more true if the artists and inventors were the ones profiting from selling reproductions of their work, rather than exploitative labels.

Musicians rarely profit from sales of their music. They profit from concerts. So yeah, in principle what you're saying is true, but in practice what Regret is saying is true, even though the chicken farmer metaphor doesn't work at all.

From a point of principle, there's no difference between pirating from Decca or having someone mass produce your wooden robot and sell it at WalMart without your permission or compensation.

Either you own your intellectual property, or you don't.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What you say would be more true if the artists and inventors were the ones profiting from selling reproductions of their work, rather than exploitative labels.

Musicians rarely profit from sales of their music. They profit from concerts. So yeah, in principle what you're saying is true, but in practice what Regret is saying is true, even though the chicken farmer metaphor doesn't work at all.

From a point of principle, there's no difference between pirating from Decca or having someone mass produce your wooden robot and sell it at WalMart without your permission or compensation.

Either you own your intellectual property, or you don't.

What if someone else, like a record company, owns your intellectual property? Or at least owns the rights to reproduce it for the next ten years?

I am not saying that pirating is right; I'm actually of mixed feelings about that for various reasons including questions about the limits of copyright. I am saying that the current structure of the mainstream music industry screws both end-consumers and musicians while benefiting record labels and distributors, and if pirating benefits both end-consumers and musicians in PRACTICE, whether it is unethical in THEORY becomes philosophical wankery.

[Payne]

I'll say what I was saying in IRC on this topic:

While I agree with a lot of the sentiments in what Regret is saying, I do consider piracy theft. Trying to label it as anything different always strikes me as an attempt to assuage guilt, or to impart more importance on the mundane doings of an ordinary meatsack.

As an ordinary meatsack myself, I can understand trying to build up stealing of work created by artists (and even all that work that the "Evil Big Bad Record Companies" do) into something of a crusade for "consumer rights" or striking a blow at the "evils of capitalism". However I choose not to aggrandise simply clicking on some buttons and listening to the results into something Terribly Important. It's theft, nothing less and, importantly, nothing more.

[Cain]

There is a great case for IP and copyright reform, but the case for its abolition is just nuts.

And yes, downloading tunes from TPB, when they are not being offered freely by the artists or record label in the first case, is most certainly theft.  I do it occasionally (though not often) and refuse to dress it up as something it is not.  At the same time, I'm probably the most prolific ebook thief in all of history, but then if I was getting paid a decent wage in a full time position, I'd be buying those books instead.  And the music.

[Doktor Howl]

What if someone else, like a record company, owns your intellectual property? Or at least owns the rights to reproduce it for the next ten years?

Depends.  Did you sign a contract, ceding the property?

I am not saying that pirating is right; I'm actually of mixed feelings about that for various reasons including questions about the limits of copyright. I am saying that the current structure of the mainstream music industry screws both end-consumers and musicians while benefiting record labels and distributors, and if pirating benefits both end-consumers and musicians in PRACTICE, whether it is unethical in THEORY becomes philosophical wankery.

I'm all about debating the duration of copyright.  It is too long, I think.

[Triple Zero]

Basically, if I make an invention, patent it, and market it, you guys are okay with the idea of someone simply copying it?

I guess we - at least in America - can just eliminate a clause from article I, sec 8 of the constitution, and then we can all have fun emulating the shining success that is Bulgaria.

Things will change drastically if my views on this are applied widely.
To be honest, i have no clue how the inventor's/artist's motivations will be effected.
But i think my reasoning is solid, so it is worth a try.

Yeah, they'll change drastically.  It's called Bulgaria.  See above.

We discussed this before.

You're confusing the cause and effect.

The situation in Bulgaria as it is (poor country) is not a result of their lack of enforcing copyrights. Instead, the lack of their enforcing of copyrights is a result of their situation.

So your argument of "we're gonna turn into Bulgaria" does not work.

[Iason Ouabache]

Well, yeah, except that people pirating music aren't making music.  They're stealing it.

I'm not stealing it, I'm just permanently borrowing it. 

[Rumckle]

Music piracy isn't stealing, music piracy is COMMUNISM!

[Triple Zero]

Music piracy isn't stealing, music piracy is COMMUNISM!

IN CAPITALIST FREE MARKET, MUSIC INDUSTRY PLAYS YOU

[LMNO]

Incidentally, the metaphor works a lot better if the chicken is decent recording equipment.

Used to be, the only way to record a band was to pay a shitload to a studio. 

Now, for a couple hundred bucks, you can record all you want at home. 

[AFK]

Yeah, it's been pointed out twice now but the metaphor doesn't work.  It would work, better, if instead of chickens all of the villagers bought cloning devices to make exact replicas of the chickens the original chickenfarmer was raising.  Even then, it wouldn't work, because the eggs produced wouldn't be exact replicas of eggs produced by the original chickens. 

And the part about pirating not hurting artists doesn't hold up.  Sure, the record company gets most of the cha-ching from record sales, but what do you think finances the follow up albums?  It sure as hell ain't t-shirt sales and concert tickets unless the label is selling those too.  So it may not be so much that you are stealing the artists profits but you are stealing their ability and capacity to make more albums.  For christ sake, music isn't that expensive.  Especially now where you can download individual songs and not have to buy the whole album. 

I really see no valid excuse for piracy in this day and age.  Music is cheap and easily available if you have a computer.