Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 105. (Read 105893 times)

The problem with your "How would I like to be treated that way?" test is that you ignore the fact that your beliefs damage other people and only look at your own loss of freedom.  People don't like being damaged - its not cruel or oppressive for them to say "Stop.  I like movies, games and Coca-Cola and if you don't, then simply abstain from having them instead of undermining the legal basis of my having these good things."

Since rights, liberties, and laws are all based on personal values, which are ultimately just opinions, there is no factual basis for any of those things. They all stem from emotions. I have empathy. Whenever I do something to someone else, I put myself in their shoes and ask myself, "How would I like to be treated that way?" If the answer is, "I wouldn't like it" then I don't do it. At some point, we might disagree because we don't all have the same opinions and there's nothing we can do other than agree to disagree when our beliefs can coexist or commit violence against each other when our beliefs cannot coexist. There's no shortcut, I'm afraid.


Genocide is a direct refutation of utilitarianism. I'm sorry if you were offended. I really respect you because, even though we disagree, you are respectful. So, I regret offending you. However, my point was only that it doesn't matter how many people want something, if it's wrong, it's wrong.

Societies will act so the question is what is a reasonable basis for action.  If you don't accept the greatest happiness of the greatest number as measured by votes in democratic elections, then what basis can society decide things like rights, liberties, laws and so on?

And please, you finally stop using slavery as a crutch and bring up genocide instead?  I can do that in reverse if you want - but like slavery, the analogy generates heat rather than light.

I'm not forcing you to produce intellectual property and I'm not forcing you to give it to me. You're perfectly free to write a novel and then lock it away in a safe. You also don't necessarily own the products of your labor. If you still my lumber and build a chair, do you own the chair just because it's the product of your labor? No, it's my chair and you also owe me for damages to my wood.


I reject utilitarianism. You can't measure happiness. There are no units. Therefore, you cannot compare it. Also, if you accept utilitarianism as a first principle then, since there were 90 million Germans in Nazi Germany and only 6 million Jews, as a utilitarian you must accept that the Jewish holocaust was "perfectly valid". That's a reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism. Murder is wrong, regardless of how many people will be happy.

Do me a favor. Go see the movie "Watchmen". It's entertaining but also shows utilitarianism in all its glory. The villain is a true utilitarian. Ultimately, utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism which says that "results matter first". I disagree. If 90 million Germans will be unhappy unless 6 million Jews are exterminated. Guess what? I want there to be a lot of unhappy Germans.

Don't get me wrong. Consequences do matter, but not first before anything else. They matter in determining how you apply your moral principles.

Exactly.  My intellectual property is the output of my labor and my employees labor.  You want me to give it you against my will.  I can accept that you believe society might be better and not start crying "its just like slavery" everytime you disagree.  I'm glad if you afford me the same courtesy.

I agree that the argument becomes repetitive.  I googled a phrase that seems familiar "greatest happiness of greatest number" and came to this wikipedia entry for utilitarianism.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

Its does a more succinct job that I've done.  The theory is that if society believes the plurality of people benefit from IP,  then society can organise itself to support IP as "the greatest good of the greatest number" is a perfectly valid basis for society to organise itself.  If you disagree with the premise that society benefits from IP, then of course you will feel you have lost freedom for no reason but the onus is on you to convince society that its plurality will benefit from changing the law.  

As to the two of us, we are agreed that absent IP rights, a lot of things like movies that are abundant now will become a lot scarcer as there is no way for them to recover the millions of costs.   I personally wouldn't want to live in the rather austere society you describe but if thats your utopia, more luck to you.

I'm denying that you have the right to tell me what information can be shared freely. I'm also denying that you have exclusive right to a name. You're still free to make movies and computer games. You're still free to name your goods whatever you like.

This is getting repetitive. Unless you say something new, I'm going to stop responding.


I'm glad you admit it was a cheap shot.

Other than when someone demands that I provide my labor to them against my will, which is slavery, the only time I mention slavery is when someone tries to imply that "X is legal therefore X is moral" or "society decides X therefore X should be legal". In which case, I'll definitely be sure to point out that slavery is completely immoral yet was legal according to society. That's not trivializing it at all. That's showing it exactly for what it is, immoral and barbaric.

You are denying me and everyone else the right to branded good, movies and computer games.  You want to take away the benefits that comes from our intellectual property rights.  And you have no right to do so - hands off!  If you don't like these things don't use them.  You can't take them from everyone else though. 

And thanks - I'm glad you finally see that bringing slavery into every argument is a cheap shot.  Please don't do it again if you don't like it done to you.

That slavery comment is so inflammatory and absurd that it doesn't even merit debate. I also think it's offensive that you would trivialize slavery, a barbaric and immoral institution, by comparing it to not being able to see "Star Wars".


I should have the right to share information freely. You shouldn't have the right to stop me. End of story. I'm not stopping you from doing anything other than denying me my rights.

If you read up on your American civil war, the South said it was fighting for "liberty" yet they were denying blacks freedom.  Your rhetoric is similar.  You keep going on about your rights but what you want is to take away everyone else's freedom to have decent big budget movies, games and consumer goods.  Its not nice.

I'm proposing we do away with intellectual property laws, consequences be damned. I've already explained how we can have brand names. Consumers will be able to sue business for fraud if they are misled into thinking that this "Burger King" is the same as that other "Burger King". It has to be made clear that they aren't the same. Just as if my name was Bill Gates and I sold you some software, I couldn't lead you to believe you were buying software from that other Bill Gates. A name is a name and nobody should have exclusive rights to them. I've also explained how commercially viable music, movies and games will still be possible. Perhaps the budgets will have to be scaled back if people refuse to pay money for them but that's just too bad. They clearly weren't worth their price to enough people. I'm not removing anything from you in the sense that I'm not preventing you from doing these things. I'm simply reclaiming my legal right to share information freely. If your business model can't survive, again, that's just too bad.

So if you have your way, there won't be global brands and won't be big budget movies and computer games.  You feel the same way about branded goods.  And that's fine.  The important thing is that you acknowledge the consequence of your belief.  Provided you are not proposing to remove these things from other people, we can all admire your ascetic outlook.

You said, "if we want entertaining movies, we have to have intellectual property laws".

Now you're saying, "if we want Star Wars, we have to have intellectual property laws".

Those are two very different claims. I'm not really interested in arguing about Star Wars because even if it never existed, we would still have other entertaining movies. You might be able to get me to feel torn about losing all forms of art unless we stomp all over personal freedom but the fact we won't have Star Wars doesn't even make me pause. I think The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an even better example to use on me as I love those movies. I think they are gorgeous, amazing, etc, etc. However, it's still not worth the price of admission, if that price is the loss of the ability to share information freely.

I made the difference absolutely clear but it would have been better if I gave the Star Wars example immediately instead of messing about on Google.  Let me give it again.

I looked up the production budget for the 1977 Star Wars.  It was $11 million in 1977 dollars.  http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars4.htm  It would be silly to argue that the movie could ever have been made if there were no way to recover that investment. 

There is only one Trent Reznor and a video of him saying "if you want to support me, buy it from my website which is nineinchnails.com". Of course, I anticipate you saying that domain names wouldn't be possible either to which I will simply point at NameCoin, Tor hidden services and Freenet as refutations of that claim.


First of all, writing a song is fun but recording a song is not. Doing 20 takes of the same section because there is string noise, one note is slightly off-tempo or some random string rings out slightly, isn't fun at all. Recording an album is a grueling and tedious process, especially when you consider that each successive take tends to get worse, not better, due to tiring out. You have to take regular breaks just to get energized which makes the process take even longer. I have a recording studio and I've recorded bands before so I know this personally. I would much rather program because it's not as demanding. For the most part, programming is fun, for me at least. Just having someone enjoy my work and compliment me is enough. I won't be offering much support or updates beyond what I feel like doing but that's where money comes in, charging people for extras.

I've also done a little acting so I can say that it is quite fun. You get to be someone else. It's a very unique experience and I'd highly recommend it. From the few independent films I've had experience with, it's actually rather unusual for non-union actors to get paid anything at all. Most of them actually spend money bringing their own wardrobe, buying their own food, gas money etc. Also, many union actors work for scale, even big names do it some time. Vin Diesel will be working for scale on the next Riddick movie, which I can't wait to see.

In summary, you've already admitted that we don't need copyrights for music because "they are artists and even if there were zero reward, they would still make the music as its beautiful" but you failed to apply that same rationale to films and games where it applies equally as well.

Nine Inch Nails is a brand and even though it was released for free, its copyrighted.  If your ideal world, there would be 1000 bands called Nine Inch Nails and all of them would have websites offering that same album for download.

The bigger issue is that they are artists and even if there were zero reward, they would still make the music as its beautiful.  Its their nature.  Making movies and computer games is a long labor intensive process with lots of work that is deadly dull.  If you don't pay people to do it, not much of it will happen.  

EDIT: to make it clear I looked up the production budget for the 1977 Star Wars.  It was $11 million in 1977 dollars.  http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars4.htm  It would be silly to argue that the movie could ever have been made if there were no way to recover that investment.

Fans are people that aren't necessarily cheap when it comes to things they love. One of my favorite bands is Nine Inch Nails. They digitally released their latest album for free two weeks before it was released on CD. After the CD was released, even in the age of iPods and piracy, the CD has sold about ~100,000 copies. Do the math, $20 dollars * 100,000 = $2,000,000 dollars. A paltry $27,575 dollars to be recouped from DVD sales is easily possible for a highly rated movie. Make it a limited edition, add special features, autopen an autograph on it and specifically tell the fans that this is how they can help make future movies possible and it will sell. Also, even if you never made a cent from DVD sales, simply having millions of people watch your films can open doors for you. You can charge for speaking engagements, commercial endorsements, etc. There are lots of ancillary services you can provide to pay for your true passion.

Yes we are in agreement   We may disagree about whether its a good thing to have movies but at least we agree that if you want to have a movie industry, you need IP law.  Bitcoin2coin and myself came to the same conclusion about branded goods like Coca-Cola, though again we didn't agree as to whether they were a good idea, only that you need IP protection to have consumer brands.

How?  If they can't get paid for seats in movie theatres or for DVD sales, how do they get paid?

No i didn't miss the point. The point was that IP laws protect a business model. I'm against this kind of practice. No business model needs to be preserved. If a business model fails it should be left to fail.

You kind of miss the point. The IP (INTELECTUAL PROPERTY) laws is said to be about property , (infinite property , because , dam it , it can be copied infinitely) , and they should ensure that the inventor/artist/investor/ is the one that gets rewarded for that "creation" and can create a business model based on that property or not. The business model here is selling a copy of a property (movie) in a theater . So you are telling me that this is what we should protect? Or we should reward the creation of movies?

I'm sorry but do you really think that by preserving a business model you are ensuring progress? I actually don't .


Actually . Thank you . You just made a good point. IP LAWS ARE ABOUT PRESERVING THE ESTABLISHED BUSINESS MODEL. I'm against that.

You don't need to invest millions to make a movie.


No, we don't. As I mentioned, you don't need millions of dollars to make a movie. You need a camera, some lights, a microphone and some actors. The movie Clerks was made on a budget of $27,575 dollars and has a significantly higher audience rating than does the most expensive film ever made, the $300,000,000 dollar Pirates of the Caribbean 3. You must have also heard about the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. There are lots of ways for independent movies to make money and if they are truly good, they will make that money back.