Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 36. (Read 105893 times)

Economies evolve thus: specialist labor/product economy > group/assembly product economy > service economy. Example is first we had farmers and blacksmiths, then we had collectives and factories, and now we have financial services, IT, hotels, restaurants, etc. (If you ask McDonald's what their business is, they would answer real estate and services. The burgers are just pre made products anyone else can make). This is pretty much a fact of life for all economies, in the world, whether third world countries evolving with the times, or online communities like SecondLife (where most of the money was first made by individuals comissioning their skills, then by groups of people coming together to tackle and sell large projects, and finally with people doing stuff like running casinos, developing land and houses to rent, or supoorting sales tracking systems).
Movies and music are products, just like those of the first two stages of a developing economy. I am pretty convinced that this sector of the economy will be following the same trend, where we used to have individual musicians and movie makers selling their stuff, then for the last many decades we had them group together to churn out stuff colaboratively (actors, musicians, special effects guys, all working under big umbrella production companies to churn out stuff almost conveyor-belt style), and now with Napster and Netflix, we are finally moving into the services economy. It is MUCH easier to pay someone $7 to $10 a month for the service of storing, organizing, delivering, and suggesting content like music and movies, then having to search for what you might like, find a place to download it from, buy storage to hold it, and organize it so you can find it later. Copyright will have zero to do with this.

Since movies appear on bittorrent before they make it to the movie theaters, it's a safe assumption. Why would they pay when they can get it for free?

Of course its theoretical - most of the movies won't be made in the first place if there is no way to recover the investment costs.  That's why the IP law is needed.

Correct.  Neither are you "clever enough."  And there isn't really a "problem" is there?  The existing system is churning out movies just fine.

If you have an idea how a decent quantity of decent movies can be financed without IP law, let us know.  Alternatively, tell us what you offer in return for removing movies from our lives.

"I'm not clever enough to figure out a solution this problem that doesn't require force. Thus, force is necessary!"

Ah, I see.  You assume that without copyright law, movie house owners won't bother with such contracts and simply wait until a copy shows up on the internet.  Under what assumptions do you come to such a conclusion?  You can't get a (decent) bootleg from the internet now until the movie is released onto DVD, so why would you assume that distribution contracts would be any less of a deterent without copyright?  Or any less of an advantage for the movie houses that play ball?  A 'dollar theater' might be able to do something along these lines without blowback, but not a first run theater.  Movies make 80%+ of every nickel in the first two weeks of a major release, for the production company anyway.

Um no.  If the owner of the movie theatre is getting the movie for free off bittorrent, he won't be signing any contracts will he?  Who would he sign it with?

Nonsense.  First run movie houses are generally bound by contract to 1) not show the movie for less than a certain amount and 2) not show the movie to the general public before release date.  Copyright says nothing about selling a legitimate DVD before it's release date, and employees would get fired for renting a new DVD before release dates when Blockbuster was still around.  Those companies are bound more by their commercial distribution agreements than copyright law.  Copyright is relatively weak, and has many exceptions.  Not the least of which is 'fair use', which is how Nina Paley can release her full length movie for free but not for any profit.

As said earlier, its a balancing act.  Is it worth losing the freedom to sell copies of films in order to get the films in the first place?  For most societies, the answer is yes.


Actually, if the movie theater owners can legally show free copies of the films that they get off bittorrent, the movie maker is not going to get a penny.  The only thing stopping movie theater owners doing that is IP law.  So the movie making business is entirely dependent on IP law.

That's not even one example.  Major motion picture companies don't actually depend upon IP monopolies for their base revenue.  They would be fools to do so.  They depend upon operational security and contract law to prevent the early release of their movies.  They make most of their money off of those movie-goers who just can't wait to see the next blockbuster, because once it hits DVD I can legally head down to the local library and check it out for free.  Sure they will swing that big stick if things get out of hand, such as a counterfitter in Hong Kong is mass producing DVD knock-offs or a cinemia employee is selling pre-release copies of the film before the movie debuts; but their business model isn't dependent upon the IP monopoly for the base revenue of a new major motion picture.  Try again.

What you described is nothing more than monopoly privilege thru force. Everything requires effort... EVERYTHING! One type of effort should have no greater privilege or protection than any other. Doing so only creates an accumulation of wealth to those who best know how to manipulate others. Look at any fiat paper money system as your best worst example.

You want to eliminate or diminsh competition. That's it. We all get to live with the consequences. As was well put further up in the thread, the masses suffer to enrich and benefit the few.

Why not?  If there is no IP law, the movie makers can't shut you down can they? 

Of course if your argument is that there would be no movies, then you are reinforcing the need for IP laws.

Exactly.  So if you remove IP laws, you remove the incentive to make movies.  There is no way for the movie maker to get paid.

They can only copy movies that are made. Think on it a while.

Exactly. If you continue reading, you'll see I explain that's why it makes no sense at all.


You're willing to put people in jail to protect investments? Sounds fucking harsh.


Seriously? If you're in the movie theater business and piss off the people who make the movies you show, you're not going to be in the movie theater business very long...

Price for what goes up?  How does the demand get transferred to the movie makers?  If their product can be got for free, they can't recover the cost of making a movie so there will be far fewer movies.

Posting this on it's own...

Let us assume that money is a necessary incentive for creative works, and that without copyright, people would consume but not pay for such work. Truly a worst case scenario for the argument against copy, for if money is not a necessity or, people would voluntarily provide the incentive, then there is no argument for copyright. What happens in this situation? As the incentive to create new works disappears, the supply of new works decrease. Assuming that people still want new works (if they don't then what's the problem?), the demand is constant. What do we know about prices when supply shrinks and demand remains constant? Prices go up. An equilibrium is reached. All without intellectual property law.

Um no it doesn't.  Intellectual property is not based on anything physical or anything in short supply.  Its based on protecting the investment of the people who pay for the work to be done.  For example, a movie costs money to make and to market.  IP law allows you to recover that money if people go to the movie theatre to watch it.  Absent IP law, the movie theatre owner could get a free copy of your movie and you would lose your investment.

I was part of a GPL project years ago and am more than familiar with RMS and his dreadful sense of humour based on recursive logic.  The fact that he chose GNU as a project name still makes me smile.

Copyleft is a loophole in and pun about copyright. As I said in my previous post, it's all about incentives.

So intellectually dishonest. How about comparing "the good IP brings" with all the bad IP brings, not just one cherry picked example.

The concept of property comes about from the nature of physical resources as finite, and the desires of human beings as infinite. Based upon these two factors, a method of preventing and resolving disputes over those scarce physical resources is necessary. One common method is for a single individual (or group of individuals) to have absolute authority over the use of some of the resources. We call this their property, and we call them its owners. The system of rules by which the owner of a property is determined must be visible and just. Visible, as Stephen Kinsella says in Against Intellectual Property, because


You do not. Understand. Economics. The "goodies that come from IP" don't come from nowhere, and get disbursed among the people. Those goodies come from everyone, and go to specific groups of people. It's incentives 101. A small group of people benefit greatly from intellectual property law, and a much larger group of people suffer mildly. Which one is going to have the incentive to defend the concept of the ownership of ideas to the bitter end?