Jason Joel Thompson wrote:
> Uh, actually this argument fails to sway because it defines theft in very
> simplistic terms. You might not be stealing my music if you copy it, but
> you certainly are stealing my profit. If you desire something that I have
> spent energy producing, then it is clear that we should come to some
> arrangement by which I should end up with something that you have spent
> energy producing (like, er, money for instance.)
Are you saying that now I have to pay you for this response you just gave me?
How much do you want, I'll get out my credit card number? What? This isn't the
same? How so? You exerted creative energy coming up with it didn't you? In
the meantime, I'm going to take your above quote and use that idea to make
millions arguing before the court system for the likes of Capitol Records and
20th Century Fox. Thanks!
> By your argument, it should be legal to counterfeit money.
Hey, now there's a great idea!
> In fact, intellectual property
> laws protect... intellectual property, which by definition, has always been
> tremendously easy to duplicate.
Not so, that's the whole point of the RIAA lawsuit regardless of anything else
they say. They certainly are not arguing on the behalf of the artists. If they
were, then why are the only paying these poor bastards less than a dollar per
CD? Where is all that other money going. Lets see, I'm thinking for a moment -
I got it - the executives paychecks!! Lets not forget those multi-million
dollar hyping budgets in order to get N'Sync and Brittany Spears albums to
market. Give me a friggin break!
> No, actually, the real difference here is that blacksmiths were being
> replaced by something that did their job better. That's called progress.
Exactly! The internet is progress, so why don't you tell the RIAA to get the
hell out of the way! If an artist wants to use the internet to promote his
music, and if he wants to create a way to play without it being re-produced -
that's his responsibility. Relying on governmental intervention to get the job
done is ludicrous. He made it, he promoted it, I listen to it. I hear it on
the radio, I hear it on MTV. I recorded it on MTV. I play it whenever I want.
Then along comes Napster and I can find the same song and record it on my hard
drive - and now it's a crime? This is the most convoluted crap I have ever been
dis-privaleged to expose my brain to.
> No one has proven that Napster is going to result in better music or that
> the removal of copyright is going to result in better drugs, coca-cola,
> filmmaking, literature, automobile design, etc.
No one has proven that its going to make music worse either. Nothing can be
worse than the over-marketed hype they call music now-a-days. Then of course we
have all the extremely talented musicians that I hear at small concerts around
this part of the country. They have not inked million dollar contracts, and
their music is easily as good as the rich pop stars. So what's motivating them
- perhaps the pure love of music? Oh I forgot, its not about the music in the
end - its the money, money, moneyaaa, .....moneyaaaaa!
> Hey, Linux is not the only example of something really cool that people have
> made without getting paid for it. There will likely continue to be many
> shining examples of what humans will do for free. And humans will continue
> to do really interesting things for free.
>
> Its just that they still have to spend a lot of their time doing things they
> get paid for.
For now yes, but thats the whole point of my argument. There is going to come a
point, when nanotechnology really hits hard and all this IP hogwash has to go.
Because nanotechnology will give people the ability to replicate anything the
want. All intellectual property will do in the end, and increasingly
totalitarian measures will be needed, is create a nano divide that makes the
current digital divide look like a toddlers dispute.
> And just because an operating system is better when lots of people can get
> in there and move things around doesn't mean that, oh, say, a movie will be
> better if lots of people can get in there and move things around.
Ah yes, but intellectual property is being used to squash new technologies and
eliminate the real potential of what the internet is. If the movie studios
cannot figure out how to make a profit in the age of the internet, then maybe
they need to seriously examine everything they do - including the medium of the
movie itself. Otherwise they need to create ways to distribute their movies
with uncrackable encryption. But if I crack it I get it.
Paul Hughes
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:35:29 MDT