Summations Only

No, I'm not. Creators can and do benefit from their work without the need to punish consumers. Copyright laws and DRM do nothing to protect content in any meaningful way, piracy is still rampant, and legitimate consumers are the only ones who are actually subject to the obstacles put in their way by rightsholders. Here you seem to admit that the purpose of "copyright" is to be a kind of mind control, that the real problem is a generation of consumers who believe they have a right to access their own culture instead of demurely accepting the dictate of content authorities. Why will they, when they can just use the force of law to change the business models of their competitors?

Not in my (decidely small sample) experience. All the people I know who don't download do so because it's against the law. If it weren't, they would download. There are a lot of people who have no moral qualms about doing something, but just don't want to break a law, even when they think the law is not right.There is a group of people for whom "breaking the law" is dissuasion enough.

I agree. There are people who don't download things just because doing so is illegal.The question is: how many of those people who don't download (but know how and easily could) instead buy the content that they would otherwise get for free were doing so not illegal?When we add up the numbers, I don't think that these people represent a significant or even noticeable chunk of the revenue for the entertainment industry.In other words, I think these folk are insignificant to the issue one way or the other. I might be wrong, and if you believe they play a noticeable role, then by all means I will welcome your presentation of the evidence that they do. But it has been my personal experience that these people just don't matter in the overall equation.Jon

This may be the case, and as I told crash, I only have a small sample size, i.e. the people I know who don't download. But of those people, everyone I know who doesn't download, does so merely because of the illegality, and would download if it were not illegal. They are also, to a large degree, avid collectors of media. My brother-in-law doesn't have cable, so he buys every TV show he wants to watch on DVD/Blu-ray. He has tons of DVDs of movies and TV shows. In fact, he'll buy one just to see fi its good.Others use Netflix because it is legal and is as close to downloading for free as they can get without breaking the law.There are also a few who find downloading inconvenient, because they don't want to worry about trying to burn a DVD, and don't want to watch stuff at their computer.So, in summary, I'm not sure how significant this group of people are, but I don't think ignoring therm and saying everyone who would download already is, is the right way to think. I do think that if it became legal, the amount of downloading would rise significantly, and the sale of said media would decrease. Whether that would begin to reverse once the novelty of downloading wore off is another thing to consider.All told, the effects of removing copyright rules regarding downloading are all but impossible to deduce without actually doing it.

This is a technology issue. The owners of the technology have always been the ones in control of the dissemination of content.A brief history:The people who had access to scribes and writing could copy books and distribute them as they wished, but those people were limited. They controlled the dissemination of that information, except for, as crash has mentioned, oral recitations.Then there was Gutenberg. And the people, limited in number, who had access to the technology of the printing press controlled the dissemination of the content. Except, again, for some oral recitations.The people who owned the musical instruments controlled the dissemination of music, except for people who could hum a good tune.Then there was recording. The technology for stamping records was expensive, and only a few people had access to it. They controlled the dissemination of music for a while.Then these cool things came out, kind of like 8-tracks, only not as sucky, called 'cassette tapes'. They could be used to record things from a record and disseminate the music to a wide audience. Anyone who had that technology was somewhat in control of the dissemination of that music.Then there was an Internetty thing, which functioned on computers, which could hold both the content of written works and the content of audio works. As we can predict from the rest of the history, the people who had/have access to this technology control the dissemination of any content the Internet can carry.And so it has been the case throughout the ages that the people who own the necessary technology have always owned the content. It has nothing to do with 'a generation of younger people' who run around theiving without guilt or shame. It is simply a matter of a new technology, one which does not rest in the hands of a small group of people but instead in the hands of the people at large.And that's where the issue lies; these entertainment companies want it the good-ol'-days way. They want a few peoplethemin control of the dissemination of content. But, hey. that's just not the world we live in anymore. Large numbers of people are now in control of the dissemination of the content by virtue of having access to the necessary technology. And this is actually a good thing. Hildred McOldIrish could never have dreamed of access to all the information we have today. Instead, she lived her life a poor illiterate peasant, dying from an easily curable (by modern standards) disease at the young age of 35, never knowing nothing much about anything but potatoes and little green men (not the X-files kind).The entertainment industry wants us to return to the era of Hildred, where only a few people have control over the dissemination of content. That a government would even entertain the idea as far as ours has so far done should put fear into all of us and call us from our television-induced comas to make sure that they do not take away the technological progress that so many people have worked so hard to advance. Not to mention the threat to education and access to culture posed by such foolishness.And this is in addition to what I've said before; that if a company wants to profit from a technology they have to suffer from it too, or else it's up to them to minimize that sufferingnot the government. OpenOffice.orgWhat rights? For the longest of human history it has always been the case that those with access to the technology have access to the content and control its dissemination. The notion that we need to stop people from using the technology they have access to is a rather novel, and a rather stupid, one. Scribes always copied books without worry if they wanted a copy of the book. If they had the technology, they had the content, and it was the same for anyone else. There have never been anything so silly as 'rights' to ideas and information and content that haven't been rife with injustice. Protected? Protected from whom? From people who want to enjoy it or learn from it? Is that who the creators want to keep their work from... from their audience?I really doubt it. But if so, these 'creators' need a new hobby.Jon* Oops; I neglected to include a history of visual performances, but I think it can be guessed based on the other histories (themselves just guesses).

I don't like the use of "download" as a proxy for "violating copyright", because it implies a world where it's somehow morally wrong to transfer media digitally.It's important to understand how language is used to alter our normal moral intuitions about accessing our own culture. When you begin to think of the ideas in your head as things you possess, and not merely things you rent from someone else, then all this hyperbole about "stealing" and "piracy" falls away.Even those who set their minds to it can't actually explain how it's a form of theft. At best, you can produce Kant's argument against plagiarism but, of course, nobody's passing around Lethal Weapon 18 and saying "look at this awesome movie I made with the corpses of Danny Glover and Mel Gibson."There's no evidence that rightsholders lose out when they create something that can't be copyrighted. Cookbooks are still a multi-million-dollar business despite the fact that you can't even copyright a recipe.

Rather good TED talk on this here:TED: Not Found

I guess I could have said "download illegally" or "download without consent of the copyright holder." But I assumed everyone knew what we were talking about and I could use a shorthand.ABE: I'm not one who views "illegal downloading" as bad. I engage in it myself from time to time, however, I can think of a way, perhaps.While downloading a copy of LW18 doesn't deprive someone else of the use of it, it does contribute to devaluation. Just like counterfeiters are arrested, not necessarily for stealing, but for creating more money than the Fed has put into circulation, thus devaluing the money.Right now, if you were to ask someone what they would pay to see LW18, they might say $7, like it costs to go to a theater. Or maybe even $25 to buy a new DVD. Others might wait until the DVD has been out a while and drops to $10 or even $5. But really, this is a combination of the perceived value of the currency and the perceived value of the media.If it became more the norm to download a movie for free, the perceived value of the movie tends to slide downward. Now, the MPAA and RIAA could (though won't) keep ahead of this trend by lowering the cost of the medi in question to keep it in line with the perceived value of said media, but the actual value of the currency isn't going to change. This will lead to less and less return on the cost of making said media, which will either go up (as it has thus far) or remain relatively steady.Again, I'm a fan of piracy, and I agree that it's not stealing, per se, but it does lead to a devaluation.Gold is worth a lot because of its rarity. If we took one of the asteroids that have a large amount of gold, and somehow mined it and shipped it back to Earth, the value of gold would end up decreasing.Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.Edited by Perdition, : typo

But if the value of art were in its scarcity, we would execute rightsholders, not grant them monopolies. Sure. It, in fact, approaches the free market equilibrium price of the marginal cost of production, which in the case of a digital file, is zero. You're simply describing what happens when a monopoly is loosened. But that's irrelevant; we all know what happens when a monopoly is opened up. The question is whether we should use the force of government power, which traditionally is understood as having the purpose of breaking monopolies, to actually shore up content monopolies.I don't think we should, or that we need to. It's hardly necessary to mine asteroids; every time we open an Earthbound gold mine, the price of gold plummets. Gold has only ever lost value in the long-term (sad news to goldbugs, I know.)

I don't see how that would be the case. The people who download are largely the people who never intended to pay anything for seeing the movie in the first place. (And it is already 100% legal to see a movie without paying for it, so it has nothing to do with breaking laws). So you cannot rely on their behavior in determining selling price since they are not going to be market participants one way or the other. This is only true if the gold is put on the market. If the gold is stuck in a hole and never seen again, then it will have no impact on the price of gold. The same is true of media: if the people seeing it for free are largely the people who aren't going to participate in the market for the media in the first place, then their free viewing can have no impact on the selling price of that media.And the same is true of your analogy for counterfeiting money. If I printed off 1000 $100 bills at mint-quality, they wouldn't serve to devalue the rest of the money one bit until I put them into circulation. Without putting the 'infringers' into 'circulation' (i.e., without including them in the market) then there is no way their actions could deprive media of its market selling price.And for the most part, these free viewers aren't part of the market for the things they view freely.Jon

so are you just too dumb to answer my question?typical.you can't answer a simple question and I am the dumb one. roflmfao @ you.

How do you know this? Sometimes, I buy a movie so I can have it "legitimately" after downloading it and watching it. If the download were legitimate, I wouldn't buy it as well. I would say this is true, but if downloading a free copy of a movie is legal, how many people who would have paid to see it will decide not to? Are you saying it would be zero?

I don't understand this at all. The value of anything is in its scarcity or the cost it takes to create (and the cost of creation is usually dictated by the scarcity of materials needed to create it.) But this is my point. The cost of the file is zero, which means people assume its not worth anything, since it was so cheap andeasy to get. However, the cost of the movie is not zero. There is the cost of paying the actors, the crew, paying for the film, the electricity, the writers, the fuel used for driving everyone where they need to go, the cost of costumes, the craft services. There is a lot of cost in making a movie, but if the finished product is valued at or near zero dollars, what's the point in making it? Not exactly. As you pointed out, the cost of copying or creating a digital file is close to nothing. In all other forms of monopoly loosening, there is still a cost associated with the creation of the product. If it suddenly became possible for me to create a virtual copy of the iPhone and sell it without infringing on any patents, I would still have to sell the phone at a minimum price, just to recoup the cost of materials, energy, and labor. So even in a vibrant marketplace of iPhone clones, there will be a minimum price that everyone sort of equalizes at which is the cost of production plus some percentage of profit.In the digitla age, the cost of production of the digital file for anyone oput there not actually involved in the making of the movie is zero. They can give it away for free and not lose anything, so the equilibrium point is going to sit at zero dollars. This is vastly different than any other monopoly breaking we've ever dealt with. I fully agree that after the content creator has had a fair amount of time to recoup the cost of production, the media in question should become free and open, but I do think the government has a vested interest in protecting that fair amount of time for the content creator.Wow, you got me arguing on the side of the movie studios there, and I'm one who doesn't feel a qualm about downloading a movie or television show. I guess I'm just a hypocrite.

I don't think this kind of language twisting is necessary. Yes it is true that words like piracy are unnecessarily inflammatory and loaded. Those words don't belong in this discussion.But regardless of how you feel about the morality of downloading, or drug usage, or speeding, I don't think there is any question that those things are contrary to the legislatively enacted statutes as interpreted by the courts.Downloading movies alone would not constitute hypocrisy in my view. Perhaps if you also railed against other acts simply on the basis that they are against existing law then we could see a double standard. But most people don't claim to never break the law in any circumstance.There are at least some laws that a moral person MUST disobey, and there are other laws on the books for which the breaking law has no moral implications whatsoever. There are still others for which concern moral issues involved in breaking the law are not universally shared by all.But there is no need to pretend that you are not violating, infringing, or breaking the law when you take willful actions to do just that, while knowing full well what the laws are. Why not just man up about what you do.That said, I've encountered many people whose justification for downloading reeks and drips with hypocrisy. Essentially nobody downloaded LW17 from megaupload in order to "stick it to the man" or because "information wants to be free" or because the music industry abuses artists. They did so because it was convenient or because they wouldn't or couldn't pay the 19.95.