underground gamer is offline for good

[MrPopo]

I'm still trying to figure out how long copyright periods lead to a dystopian future.

[o.pwuaioc]

You don't think the current generation who grew up with instant access to almost all entertainment ever produced feels more entitled to their media than people did in ancient or medieval times?

Absolutely not. Not only was there no copyright on literature, but e.g. in ancient Rome the circus and gladiator games were free. In ancient Greece, the Dionysia was so important that they subsidized it for poorer citizens.

You would never see that today.

You don't need really copyright when it is cost prohibitive to make and sell copies of someone else's work. The other stuff isn't really an equivalent, as there are plenty of free entertainment options ("live" and recorded) today as well.

I think we're trying to compare too many unlike things...

But it wasn't. Some bookseller could acquire a copy and have his slaves make copies.

And how many major events - sports championship games or concerts - are free? What spectacles are free? I can think of very few, and none are as important for the world today as the City Dionysia/Roman ludi were back then.

[dsheinem]

And how many major events - sports championship games or concerts - are free? What spectacles are free? I can think of very few, and none are as important for the world today as the City Dionysia/Roman ludi were back then.

All the major sporting events - World Series, Superbowl, NBA Finals, etc. are broadcast on Network TV, which - if you have the basic and cheap equipment - are viewable for free for the vast majority of the population. "

"Major concerts" would be...what? Things like LiveAid? I think those get network coverage too. Certainly PBS carries symphony and opera performances. NYC and most major cities have major free concerts every summer in places like Central Park, water fronts, etc.

Again, though, these are all a far cry from feeling entitled to be able to download the newest Halo game (before it even gets released!).

[o.pwuaioc]

Again, though, these are all a far cry from feeling entitled to be able to download the newest Halo game (before it even gets released!).

You're in the wrong conversation, and you missed my important qualifier. Also, when I say that the City Dionysia was free, I'm talking about access to the actual festival, to the pompe and the dramas and comedies performed there. It's the equivalent of actually getting into Super Bowl for free, not watching it on free television (which didn't exist then, of course, so you trying to force that comparison is laughably bad).

[BurningDoom]

Again, though, these are all a far cry from feeling entitled to be able to download the newest Halo game (before it even gets released!).

You're in the wrong conversation, and you missed my important qualifier. Also, when I say that the City Dionysia was free, I'm talking about access to the actual festival, to the pompe and the dramas and comedies performed there. It's the equivalent of actually getting into Super Bowl for free, not watching it on free television (which didn't exist then, of course, so you trying to force that comparison is laughably bad).

So because an Arena event in Ancient Greece was free, that means that you in 2013 should be able to download a game for free that was meant for profit? Sure, that makes sense.

[o.pwuaioc]

So because an Arena event in Ancient Greece was free, that means that you in 2013 should be able to download a game for free that was meant for profit? Sure, that makes sense.

Did you even bother to read the conversation?

[o.pwuaioc]

Just in case someone else wants to not read what I wrote, here it is again:

I, for one, don't think copyright should last longer than a short period of time during which the artist can be compensated for their work with enough to continue working on something new.

http://racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 93#p760293

[dsheinem]

Again, though, these are all a far cry from feeling entitled to be able to download the newest Halo game (before it even gets released!).

You're in the wrong conversation, and you missed my important qualifier. Also, when I say that the City Dionysia was free, I'm talking about access to the actual festival, to the pompe and the dramas and comedies performed there. It's the equivalent of actually getting into Super Bowl for free, not watching it on free television (which didn't exist then, of course, so you trying to force that comparison is laughably bad).

You're killin' me, Smalls!

[marurun]

I'm still trying to figure out how long copyright periods lead to a dystopian future.

I don't know about dystopian, but long copyright terms and stricter enforcement favor corporations and other large holding agencies over individuals. It, along with broad and vague patents also play a major role in stifling creative and inventive activity, especially among individuals and smaller corporate entities. In the US copyright and patents were framed in the law as a tool by which to encourage creativity and the growth of the public domain, something current copyright law actually stifles. Why? Because copyright has become expensive to litigate, so only large corporations are effective at protecting copyrights. By raising the cost of participating in the copyright economy, forcing most creators into work-for-hire positions, which remove copyrights from the creators and hand them to corporate entities. By keeping cultural staples under lock and key for 100 years and thus rendering entire generations of people unable to engage with the creative materials they grew up with in any meaningful, legal way other than simple consumption.

If you look at the more distant origins of copyright you encounter the idea of moral rights, which play a prominent role in Great Britain and many other nations, but was dropped in the US. Under this theory copyrights and patents aren't meant to encourage creativity and enrich the populace so much as to protect the morality of authorship. Much like how liberties were lauded in the US as moral rights, copyrights in the UK are lauded as moral rights. But longer copyright and patent terms and stricter punishments and enforcement provisions which favor corporate ownership over individual ownership stomp all over the idea of moral rights as well.

So current practices in "intellectual property" law in the US and most of the rest of the world actually operate in a manner contrary to the core philosophical inspirations for their legal enshrinement. US copyright no longer encourages intellectual and creative enrichment of the populace in the same way UK copyright often stomps on the moral rights of the citizenry (I would argue moral rights cannot be held by corporations as corporations are solely legal entities and have no relationship to public morality).

Oh how I tire of the bolded part. That it's a HYPOTHETICAL loss of income. No it isn't! A game comes out, you download play and enjoy it instead of buying it, that is a REAL, TANGIBLE, loss of income. I make game x. I sell one copy. That person puts it on the internet and 500,000 people download and play it. Maybe only 200,000 people would have actually put down money for it, so here I am, claiming 300,000 hypothetical customers that don't exist -- except they DO, because there they are, playing my game, that they were supposed to buy in order to do so. Perhaps law currently defines that as copyright infringement, but common sense defines it as theft.

Nobody (reasonable, and nobody I know personally) contends that widespread internet copyright infringement causes NO loss of income for publishers. However, there is no way to know the ACTUAL lost income, because every infringement is not a lost sale. If a $25 game is "pirated" and downloaded 100,000 times, the publisher has lost $2,500,000 of "use" income, meaning that $2,500,000 of game is being played without being paid for, but that doesn't mean that the publisher would have sole 100,000 more copies had the game never been made available illegally for free. The aim of the law in cases like this is, in addition to punishment of the offender, to make the plaintiff "whole". But there's no way to know what making whole constitutes. Ideally, the game was never "pirated" to begin with, but there's no evidence that exists or can exist that can give us a picture of what sales would have been like without the occurrence of the illegal distribution of the game. And let's be honest, if someone downloads a game illegally instead of paying for it, they're not a customer. They might be using "your" product, but they're no customer of yours. If we try to claim that every infringement should be treated as a lost sale and the money recovered thus, that would render "piracy" and the resulting prosecution and cost recovery MORE profitable than simply selling the game with illegal downloading uninvolved. That is no longer "making whole", but is instead using the legal system for inappropriate financial enrichment, something that is very frowned upon in the legal community.

Further, calling copyright as theft common sense is nonsense. Every time psychologists study what most of society calls common sense, they find this "common" sense is either incorrect information, or correct information applied incorrectly. Appeals to common sense are thus useless in a meaningful discussion of issues, because for all practical intents and purposes common sense is wrong and/or doesn't actually exist.

Legalese needs to catch up with the rest of the world already. The technicalities that exist between theft and the ancient definitions of copyright are ridiculous. The fact that someone can, with a straight face, pretend as if copyright infringement does not equate to theft, blows my mind. Has internet entitlement really jumped that far over the edge?

This is 100% opinion. I understand why you feel this way, and many other folks do, but this in no manner establishes any kind of factual argument that can be addressed or rebutted. My opinion is that copyright law is truly messed up, but not because it doesn't equate copyright infringement with theft. It is because copyright law fails to respect the original goals of copyright in any meaningful way and actually puts a drain on the economy by discouraging continued creative output by a wide range of market actors. And there's actually quite a large number of studies and research that support that conclusion, and, to the best of my knowledge, none that support the necessity, or appropriateness, of equating copyright infringement with theft.

Part of the problem here is that people think if you don't support equating infringement with theft, you must be one of those pirates who think it's moral and right, despite it being illegal. This is patently false. Copyright infringement and theft are so different in the details that they bear little semblance, and thus need different legal frameworks, as well as mental models, in order to operate correctly. It has nothing to do with theft being "wrong" but copyright infringement being OK because blah blah blah insert bullshit reason here.

[MrPopo]

I'm still trying to figure out how long copyright periods lead to a dystopian future.

I don't know about dystopian, but long copyright terms and stricter enforcement favor corporations and other large holding agencies over individuals. It, along with broad and vague patents also play a major role in stifling creative and inventive activity, especially among individuals and smaller corporate entities.

I'd argue that it's really patents that are the problem in terms of stifling creativity, especially the current state of software patents. Copyrights can prevent you from using someone else's characters to tell your story, but at the same time you should be able to tell your story without their characters. Unless I'm missing something that copyright cuts off.