Which brings me to another point:
I have complained, repeatedly, over the years that DRM apologists erroneously refer to copyright infringement as "stealing". Copying and redistributing a file that you don't have the right to redistribute is illegal, but it's not stealing.
The criminal culpability of commiting an illegal act has exactly jack and shit to do with how the victim of your crime is harmed, or if there's even a victim at all, so if you're going Semantic Fu here based on an infringer not depriving someone of physical property, I am going to throw a hearty lol in your direction, friend.
You can't seriously be suggesting that being guilty of one illegal act is equivalent to being guilty of another, significantly different illegal act, so I'm going to have to ask you precisely what your point is.
From what I hear, pro-DRM people believe that 80,000 times the sale value of a file is a suitable amount to claim for damages.
I am pro-DRM and I do not think it is reasonable, no.
However, I do think it should be treated as per the market value of the copyrighted material, with appropriate criminal sentencing. If you've got thousands of dollars worth of pirated media, you should be treated like somebody who stole a car.
But I am guessing we part ways on this.
We part ways on being pro-DRM. I can't imagine supporting a business model that harms customers while not deterring illegal consumers in the slightest. (See my Blu-Ray example, above -- the copy protection has prevented third parties from developing on-the-fly decompression software, but not from developing software to rip data to a file; it has literally prevented people who use Mac or Linux from playing legally-purchased discs without stopping pirates from copying and redistributing the data on them.)
As for "treated like somebody who stole a car", you're being vague, and I'm sure deliberately so. If we're simply talking about a monetary fine, I can get behind that. As for prison time, no, not unless we're talking about people selling warehouses full of bootlegs.
I think DRM and piracy lawsuits are two different heads of the beast, so it's pointless to claim that pro-DRM people must advocate huge lawsuits.
I was being glib, and making a specific reference to the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case, referenced earlier in the thread.
I think DRM will not be as big of an issue, as companies are beginning to legitimately fear the backlash that comes from draconic DRM. I cannot see anybody rationalizing the use of rootkits or system-disabling malware being installed without permission. The producers will see how far the can push the boundries, as they will with any new technology, but I think the trend will curve more towards consumer rights as people learn more about what they face.
An RIAA spokesman was recently quoted as saying
"DRM is dead" -- he's now
claiming he was misquoted, but what he DID say is that the music industry is moving away from it as a business model. The Sony rootkit fiasco did a hell of a lot of damage, and Apple's proven that DRM-free songs sell just as well as DRM'ed ones (and has pulled the neat trick of charging thirty percent more for them).
Shit like that's going to keep happening. The blowback from this incident could damage ebook DRM just as badly as the Sony incident damaged music DRM. More on the pending lawsuit below.
Also, they treat you like you do not own the song you just bought because you in fact do not own it, just like you don't suddenly own the entire Beatles back catalog the moment you buy a Greatest Hits album.
Oh, come the fuck on, this is some Guildenstern-level strawman bullshit you're pulling here.
If you buy a Beatles album on a traditional, physical medium, you fucking-well own the album. You can play it on any hardware you want, you can copy it (for personal use), and you can goddamn well resell it to somebody else if you want to.
Nobody, anywhere, ever has suggested that buying a book is equivalent to buying its copyright. That's a very very stupid strawman, and I am embarrased for both of us that you've put me in the position of even taking the time to rebut it.
ps: the penalty for infringement has been 150 grand per act of infringement for decades. The RIAA does not make these numbers out of whole cloth.
...are you seriously citing the fact that these numbers have existed before widespread Internet usage as support FOR continuing to use them?
At any rate, I know what the definition of theft is and I know it only specifically applies to physical chattels. I was illustrating a point: wrongs are not based on harm done, they are based on intent. From a practical standpoint, the only reason to cry about infringement not actually being stealing because the law calls it something else is to justify it to yourself and take comfort in the fact that you didn't really steal that copy of Windows XP when you pirated it instead of paying the $300 market value.
Did you just describe price-fixing by a convicted monopoly as "market value"? Cute.
Infringement is itself part of the market's tendency toward self-correction. People are pirating songs because they don't want to pay $17 for a fucking CD? Try offering them 99-cent singles. Works pretty well, it turns out. If the publishers had tried that approach in the first place instead of trying to fight emerging technology in the courts, things might never have gotten to this point.
Sell your product through a convenient means at at a reasonable price and people will be less inclined to seek illegal alternatives. Even if you take ethics and morals out of the argument entirely (and I think there are PLENTY of ethical and moral arguments to be made against gouging consumers, stifling competition, and taking in huge profits while giving a pittance to the people who actually produced the product you're selling), that's the bottom line here. Speaking from a purely pragmatic perspective, all the lawsuits and DRM in the world aren't going to curb piracy -- providing a consumer-friendly alternative is the only thing that can.
I WANTED to buy a Blu-Ray drive, God dammit. I really did. I'd have been happy to shell out $100 (well, a net $70, since I went with a $30 DVD burner instead) for one and then thrown down hundreds more dollars over the next few months on movies to stick in it. But some fuckwits at the MPAA decided they didn't want me to be able to use it under OSX or Linux (or even on standard software under Windows).
That's how the market WORKS: if you ask for $100 for a product that doesn't work, you're not going to sell very many.
DRM is a means to stem the tide; it might not stop the major distributors but it will at least slow down the limewire frat boys.
Det responded to this as if it bore any kind of counterargument besides "Don't be stupid."
I am not as polite as Det.
In case you missed it, Amazon's CEO is pretty legitimately sorry about all this.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic. He made a big public apology because he hoped it would mollify his company's victims enough to keep his ass from getting sued.
It didn't, of course. A high school senior who lost all the notes he'd scribbled in the margins is the first to sue; he's seeking class-action status.
I'll say one thing: when he goes back to school, that kid is going to be able to give a hell of a report on 1984.
EDIT:
to myself and a vicarious
to everyone else in the thread for not immediately seeing what you did here:
Which brings me to another point:
I have complained, repeatedly, over the years that DRM apologists erroneously refer to copyright infringement as "stealing". Copying and redistributing a file that you don't have the right to redistribute is illegal, but it's not stealing.
The criminal culpability of commiting an illegal act has exactly jack and shit to do with how the victim of your crime is harmed, or if there's even a victim at all, so if you're going Semantic Fu here based on an infringer not depriving someone of physical property, I am going to throw a hearty lol in your direction, friend.
From what I hear, pro-DRM people believe that 80,000 times the sale value of a file is a suitable amount to claim for damages.
The part of my post that you skipped over was this:
You know what stealing is? It's when you take something that somebody else owns and remove it from their property.
It fucking-well does not matter if you're the person who sold it to me or if you pay me back for it. If you remove it from my property without my permission, it is theft.
A simple "Sorry, won't happen again" from Amazon is insufficient. They should be sued for theft.
You just spent two pages arguing with the two sentences I spent saying downloading a file illegally is not the same as stealing, while neatly sidestepping the part where I suggested that deleting a file off a user's device without permission is.
I mean, through my whole response I was aware that you were focusing on the larger issue of infringement while avoiding the specific issue of the Amazon case we're talking about, but it only just now hit me that you actually deliberately avoided the comparison that was the entire point of my post...and in fact quoted everything in my post BUT that.
A nicely subtle bit of trolling, that. Like Guild before he got lazy and just started saying the craziest shit he could possibly come up with. It's a welcome break from the bludgeoning, inartful trolling that SoraCross keeps cranking out.
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Topic: Another thread on copyright/patent/trademark law (Read 58899 times)