Depends on which economists you ask. There are a lot of economists who object on ethical grounds, in much the same way medical scientists object to certain human trials. That is, they dismiss the "how" because they answer no to the philosophical question, "should we permit copyright law?"

Copyrights, in effect, grant the holder partial control (ownership) of the property of other people. If I own a canvas and paint, and you own a copyright for an image, then you also own a part of my canvas and paint. You get to tell me what I can and can't do with it in the privacy of my own home.

If you can imagine an extreme case, where all images are copyrighted, then I could not legally paint on my own canvas.

In reply to this comment by MINK
The economists solution is to make copyright laws that try to give an artist some kind of mechanism to monetize his work... but i think if you do a survey among artists about copyright laws you will find some interesting, confusing, and puzzling responses.

>> ^cdominus:
MINK,
Boys make lemonade. Government takes small percentage. Government buys paint for artist down the road. Artist makes painting with a markup of 3000%. Lemonade stand starts to look like a waste of time.
How about this instead, "Boys make lemonade. One of the boys breaks off to pursue Art career with his percentage of profit. He makes 3000% mark up on first painting. Lemonade stand starts to look like a waste of time."
I don't think the force of government was necessary.



The problem with your distortion of my crap example is that you completely misunderstand the source and motivation of art.

The economists solution is to make copyright laws that try to give an artist some kind of mechanism to monetize his work... but i think if you do a survey among artists about copyright laws you will find some interesting, confusing, and puzzling responses.

Am i deaf or has the Great Almighty Copyright Law struck down?

Thanks, Jonny. I appreciate your point. It sure bugs me, though, having us happily keep something that announces at the start that its unlawful to transmit it.

In reply to this comment by jonny:
In principle, I agree with you. I've tried many times to see that rule/guideline enforced, and failed every time. Despite my admonitions to dag that having the FAQ entry provides zero legal cover if there is copyrighted material on VS, he has never supported removal of any sift when it comes up. I've never gotten a straight answer from him on it, but I think he wants the FAQ entry so as to discourage new(er) users from regularly posting up every new Simpsons episode, etc. If/when VS starts to see a large number of full length movies or television episodes posted, I suspect dag will start to enforce the rule.

On a side note, Dr. Strangelove presents an interesting example of the failure of copyright laws. The whole point of copyright is to encourage new ideas by providing knowledge creators with some exclusivity over their works for some time. Given that Kubrick and Peter George (author of the original novel) are both dead, there is no reason for Dr. Strangelove to still be under copyright. But the law allows for copyright term to last for as long as 70 years(!) after the death of the author. And in this case, the copyright is owned by a corporate entity, extending the copyright term to as much as 95 years after publication.

I could write endless pages of text on this subject, so I better stop here before I get carried away.

In reply to this comment by oxdottir:
Hey, it seems to me you are on my side in this:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Dr-Strangelove-94-mins

In principle, I agree with you. I've tried many times to see that rule/guideline enforced, and failed every time. Despite my admonitions to dag that having the FAQ entry provides zero legal cover if there is copyrighted material on VS, he has never supported removal of any sift when it comes up. I've never gotten a straight answer from him on it, but I think he wants the FAQ entry so as to discourage new(er) users from regularly posting up every new Simpsons episode, etc. If/when VS starts to see a large number of full length movies or television episodes posted, I suspect dag will start to enforce the rule.

On a side note, Dr. Strangelove presents an interesting example of the failure of copyright laws. The whole point of copyright is to encourage new ideas by providing knowledge creators with some exclusivity over their works for some time. Given that Kubrick and Peter George (author of the original novel) are both dead, there is no reason for Dr. Strangelove to still be under copyright. But the law allows for copyright term to last for as long as 70 years(!) after the death of the author. And in this case, the copyright is owned by a corporate entity, extending the copyright term to as much as 95 years after publication.

I could write endless pages of text on this subject, so I better stop here before I get carried away.

In reply to this comment by oxdottir:
Hey, it seems to me you are on my side in this:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Dr-Strangelove-94-mins

Well, they are already blocking it on a DNS level in Denmark - yay, freedom of speech - so I dunno what's going to happen. If the trial goes against piratebay, I think the worst thing that's going to happen is that the servers move to russia, or somewhere similar, where the copyright laws are less stringent. Eventually, they are probably going to move off the torrent tech, and use some sort of encrypted connection.

I think Bill has a minor point in reguards to possession of stole goods, but he fails to understand the fatal flaw is his analogy; if the guy who stole the mail from your mailbox calls his friend, and tells him that you received a letter from your mother that says how you used to wet the bed, that friend is in possession of some juicy gossip, but not the actual letter. He cant be charged with jack. If he wrote down what was on the letter word for word and handed it to his friend, his friend is only in possession of some paper and ink given to him legally and information, which, at least as far as I know has no laws regulating ownership of that information, with the possible exception being IP and copyright law.

Palin's Email basically amounts to the same thing, and screen shots of the emails are nothing more than transmition of information.

I learn and teach proper gun safety. Just as any one else needs to learn how to drive a car safely. Yes I agree with common sense gun laws, but like copyright laws, FISA, and Patriot Act (Espionage Act)I do not agree with the amendments of very well written laws that already do their jobs.

He struck down Illinois gun rights, Chicago anti gun laws(supports them), and the right to own a Semi Auto in certain states. When there are bans on Semi Auto, Full Auto pistols, then there is a ban on the majority of handguns by proxy. Pump guns and Revolvers are unwieldy, I'm not talking about the right to defense I'm talking about the right to own and bear weapons that are formidable to the weapons that the good guys have.

They dont want the people to have these weapons because as is said: it impedes the right of them to enforce laws. No, it scares the shit out of authority, which is exactly what is needed. Criminals could care less what gun laws you put out there. Again I agree with common sense laws, but I do not agree with radical expansion of said laws.

On another note: Mcain is bush, Obama is a Fake Idol, Nader is a conspiracy theorist, and Lobbyist are money grubbing ass hats. The choice is? Gotdamn that's a tough choice.


Eisenhower said "Beware the Military Industrial Complex." http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

Washington said "Beware of foreign entanglements."
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/farewell/text.html
To choggie, many presidents have warned us and yet we still continue to follow the lead lemming.

*dead

fucking misuse of copyright law.

With Fox thinking that was plagarism it's not so hard to see why copyright law is royally fucked in the US at the moment.

Is it too much to expect te media to know what Plagarism actually is??

Of To We. Indeed.

Fixed by searching for misspelled versions. Comedy central already got all the properly spelled ones taken down, and removed it from the daily show website, and removed it from the comedy central website. In other words, there is no way to get access to this clip except the copyright infringing way, and copyright law should be amended to legalize these kinds of cases.

I had a brief period of piracy myself. when I was 14 i bought an Atari 520 ST in Germany and someone smuggled it across the Yugoslavian border in the trunk of a car for me. the tariffs were enormous, specialy for the technical goodies from the capitalist west so, i have my computer safe at home, now what? you couldn't buy most of the new games or software legaly then, if any. you had a bunch of pirates to choose from, but most of them just ripped you off. so i got together with a few friends from school who also owned Ataris, each had some money so we mail ordered some 50 or 60 games, on 3.5" floppys, from this shady character from Netherlands to a PO box in Austria and then smuggled them back home. we then copied the games on as many floppys as we could afford, placed an ad in a computer magazine (all the pirates did it since then socialist Yugoslavia didn't have adequate copyright laws for digital media) and started making some bucks. in the beggining it was enough to cover our expenses and finance the buying of new stuff, then more people started buying these 16-bit machines, business was good, but we, at least myself as far as i can remember, didn't do it for long, we did it mostly for access to new games and other software, which we couldn't get anywhere else but abroad. some friends of mine still continued this into the PC era... all that changed with us joining the dirty capitalist rat-race in the 90s, of course, but in that brief time it certainly helped us in computer literacy as we could get practicaly any game or professional software for free and toy with it at home

These giant corporations have been stealing money from us for years. There has been a price fix in on CDs, movies and games for ages, before Napster even came along. Now we are making them pay and they don't like it. Boohoo, I have no sympathy for those bigwigs.

Not to mention most signed (not independent) musicians only make about 1 penny off of every CD sold. They make more money from concerts and T-shirt stands than selling CDs.

Artists - the real artists, not the rehashed Nickelback band you hear on the radio - crave exposure more than money, and I believe if you polled all independent, self-employed artists, they would agree that these copyright laws need to change.

^Schmawy
I hear what you're saying, the argument that because BMW probably paid MGM a decent amount of money to use their car, it suddenly becomes alright to pirate the film. And I think its absurd to suggest they're heroes of morality.

On the other hand the RIAA and MPAA are such immoral bastards themselves there aren't too many consumers willing to fly their banner (lest they get sued for flying a banner without copyright permission).

I think a lot of us dance around in the grey area, not really right, but not exactly outright thievery. I really don't think a "right/fair" option exists at the moment.

>> ^Bidouleroux:

lol. Don't you realize that by watching videos on the sift you're breaking the copyright laws of most industrial countries?


Sorry if it was unclear, the eye patch and peg leg bit was directed at myself

>> ^Crosswords:
How disgraceful, they know what they're doing even if its not technically illegal. What? This eye patch? Oh gee how'd that get there, my wooden peg leg? I'll thank you very much not to bring that up.

lol. Don't you realize that by watching videos on the sift you're breaking the copyright laws of most industrial countries?