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Copyright is out of date. Take your "intellectual property" and think for yourself.

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The remix scene is just an update of conductors and arrangers of classical. They take other peoples work and assemble a band of instruments, sometimes rewriting the music to fit a theme, or what they have on hand, and then present it to others. I don't think we're in a "post-sampling" era, I think most people just didn't realize how things transformed.

I blame Tony James and Sigue Sigue Sputnik and groups like Pop Will Eat Itself (PWEI)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdfNh6P_A3g

So if an individual or a company spends hundreds of hours or millions of dollars creating something that only exists in the digital realm, everyone has the right to copy it or even resell it? Is that seriously your position?

Copyright is not only not out of date, it is more relevant than ever.

The problem is that corporations are abusing it. Copyright was meant to give a creator a reasonable period of time to earn a living from their work and then it went back to the public domain. This has now been perverted by the likes of Disney to mean "we own this shit forever" (the irony being they made their fortune from public domain stories).

But copyright as a concept is still totally valid. I write software for a living. Some stuff, I give away. But that's my decision. I'm sure as hell not giving up my livelihood because you read some Stallman.

you're so full of shit, your eyes are brown.

Go read something.

As I understand it, the function copyright serves in a society is to protect and encourage creativity. It's hard to think that it's serving it's purpose when teens who create their own music video for a popular song get it DMCA'd.

Software piracy is theft, but what if, as an amateur programmer, I was to re-purpose some of your code? Do we protect the work you did so that creators are properly reimbursed for their efforts, or do we allow a large degree of "remixing" that would allow me to build on your work without restriction, and then for others to build on mine? How do we balance the approach, and who decides how to balance it?

@Jinx that's the point. it's a complex issue.

Copyright should encourage creativity and does, but as I said it's been perverted.

The end point is that ultimately creators must get paid somehow, and taking a simpleton approach like trance moron gets us nowhere.

Seriously dude.. If you want to "debate" intellectual property, then you need to read this first. Otherwise, you can go debate someone else.

Sorry, I missed the part where you actually engaged in a debate.

Let's recap shall we?

You posted a blanket statement about copyright, with no supporting arguments.

I responded with some reasons why I don't think it's that simple.

And you then came back with (to use you new favourite word) an ad hominem.

At no point in this thread have you made a single point or argument, other than linking to a libertarian pamphlet.

Then to top it all off, you seem to think you have the right to tell me to "debate somewhere else".

But it's ok, I have no interest in debating with a petty child like you anyway. I'm done.

"Let's recap shall we?"

I'm not interested.

"But it's ok, I have no interest in debating with a petty child like you anyway. I'm done."

Name-calling, the last resort of the glaringly incompetent.

I think the notion that creators won't get paid without copyright is a bit far-fetched. Just as the notion that existence of copyright ensures creators will get paid is a bit far-fetched.

It's certainly not impossible to make money as a creator without the benefit of copyright or patent or similar concepts. WD-40 famously was never patented, for example. Many software developers give away software and charge for service agreements on the software they've written. There's no copyright or patent system protecting that income stream -- anybody could offer service for the software they've written. But, they still manage to make money. Some of them a lot of money.

It's not impossible (or maybe even harder) for a creator to make money without copyright or patent. It's just a different process.

WD-40 wasn't patented because they didn't want to disclose the formula to the competition. In theory, no-one outside the company knows how to make it, so they do guard their IP zealously.

That said, there are certainly ways for content creators to get paid without copyright. I'm not arguing that.

For example, I've participated in a small amount of open-source development. I was paid by the company I work for to do it, because they needed features added to an existing open source product.

Then there's the whole SAAS model and open-source support model etc.

I think all of those are great and if that's the way someone wants to run their business model and it works for them, then more power to them.

The key point here is that it's their choice. They created the IP, put in the hours of work, etc. I believe that if you create something, it's up to you how you monetise it, and one of those options is copyright. It's kinda hilarious that certain so-called "libertarians" are arguing against a content creators right to decide how they make money with their creation.

sidenote: for someone called arugumentativeasshole, you've been neither.

More than reading this article, I point you towards the commentary on this article which reads:

"This is good, but the problem with reformers who do not want to totally abolish patent and copyright is that their arguments basically amount to "the law has gone too far" (people like Khanna, Tom Bell, Alex Tabarrok, Jerry Brito, Cory Doctorow, Public Knowledge, the EFF, Lawrence Lessig, and so on). That requires an empirical claim as dubious as those of advocates of the current IP regime. The only principled case for IP reform is one that also makes the case for IP abolition."

This, although not specifically stated, this comment demonstrates a preference for rigor when it comes to justifications for any position on any issue. Rationalism allows you take a consistent position based on unchanging principles. Hermeneutics as well as other modes that deal with all issues as a matter of "preference" or bias can seem rather arbitrary and harder to defend through rational argumentation.

That position doesn't make any sense. Context matters and there are always exceptions to every rule. It seems to be a common ideal of the right that complex systems can have simple solutions. Sometimes they can, but mostly they don't.

Rationalism may allow me to "take a consistent position based on unchanging principles", but it doesn't mean I have to blindly apply those principles regardless of the circumstances.

For a really simple example, let's take homicide. Killing, I'm sure we're agreed is wrong. So everyone who takes a human life should be sanctioned, yes?
Except in self-defence.
Except in a war.
What about other mitigating factors too. Accidental death. Killing by someone mentally incapable of knowing what they're doing.
We could debate the merits of each individual case all day long, but the end point is that yes, at some point we make a judgement, and ultimately that leads to a law.

So it goes for IP law. Yes, current IP in the US is not only broken, but badly broken and broken in many different ways from patent trolling to DMCA lunacy.

That doesn't mean we just throw out the whole damn thing.

We don't have to make an empirical claim about all law. We make judgements based on what a "reasonable person" considers fair. Yeah, that shifts back and forth and sometimes (like now) it's hideously broken, but that's why we have the ability to change laws.

It's not like that everywhere. NZ, for example, has some quite reasonable provisions in it's IP law (or had, they may have changed recently). I can't sell copies of a song I bought, but I can format shift it, time shift it, etc. That seems reasonable to me (and I suspect, to most people).


I must confess I had to look up "hermeneutics" (good word).

You have completely misunderstood the point and have mistaken the method for interpreting data with the data itself. Yes, of course context matters, but none of your examples presents an exception to rationalism (PDF) in any way. Using reason does not pre-determine the conclusion prior to the interpretation of the data. Just the opposite, rational deductive reasoning enables one to interpret the data from an unbiased position, in contrast to the hermeneutics which you seem to be employing. Without a consistent position based on unchanging principles, the data is either consciously or unconsciously filtered through your a prior "preference" or bias in arbitrary and/or indefensible (rationally-speaking) ways.

And IP is no exception (PDF).

@ChaosEngine

I will venture that "socialization" of the means of production can remain separate from their "nationalization," and also their only possible compliance with non-aggression while contributing to free-market prosperity, comes -- if by "means of production" we mean, not the built factories, railroads, whatever, but the allowance of such building. That is, if we socialize "intellectual property."

As such, patents plain and simple legally restrict "the means of production" to those who own them. Socialism, when it comes to IP, does make sense. It makes no sense, however, when it comes to scarce goods.

In this regard, Wilhelm Reich's "Mass Psychology of Fascism" (PDF) is a good book to read on this subject as it goes a long way towards explaining the mass appeal of the state. He may focus too much on irrational drives, and remains stuck in untenable syndicalist ideas, but here we must distinguish thymological irrationality from praxeological "irrationality." Praxeologically, humans are always rational, never irrational.

For this, I think it'd be interesting to put Reich's theory next to "public choice" theory for a more complete picture, but then, we'd need to have an intelligent discourse rather than the name-calling and epithets I've come to expect.

While this may all seem rather academic, this discourse has many practical uses, like understanding the chances of reversing social trends towards statism, etc. since it seems to me that a Manichean system, with a mix of chaos and order dominating, and periodic tilts towards one end (chaos, nazism, communism) or the other (order, rationalism, anarchy), can serve social orders like a yin-yang with neither pole ever dominating totally or for long.