From: Jason Joel Thompson (jasonjthompson@home.com)
Date: Wed Aug 02 2000 - 12:37:50 MDT
> 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?
Well... to be truthful, not very much. But you're welcome to send me a
check if it moved you.
Your slippery slope argument is is... uh... dumb.
"Oh, what, you want to protect your ideas?! Oh, I suppose you're going to
want to charge for every word you speak! I suppose you're going to want to
charge people for seeing what you look like it public! I suppose you're
going to want to track down every time your name is uttered and send someone
a bill!"
Isn't there a nice reasonable attractor state somewhere between "absolute
dictatorial control over IP" and "absolute elimination of IP?"
> > By your argument, it should be legal to counterfeit money.
>
> Hey, now there's a great idea!
Strangely enough, millions would disagree. I guess they have some naive
notion that it might devalue the entire economy.
>
> > 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!
Hmm, I'm not following this argument. Would you mind trying again?
> > 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!
Now I'm as much in favor of the Internet as anyone, but I also don't blindly
equate its evolution with 'progress.' IMO, that's part of the problem
here-- some automatically assume that the Internet can do no wrong and just
want to make its progress as unimpeded as possible. I, on the other hand,
think it might be charming if we little humans had some say in where things
went next.
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.
Let me try to simplify it for you then:
Scenario A: He make music. Radio promote music. He sell music. Radio sell
advertising.
Result A: They provide a service and get paid for it.
Scenario B: He make music. You take music.
Result B: They provide a service and not get paid for it.
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!
I think it's very nice that you want to rely on an individual's pure love of
their art form to ensure high quality product.
Personally, when it comes to things like pharmaceuticals, automobile design,
software development, etc, I don't mind if we throw in a handful of extra
creators who happen to be profit motivated. Hey, the people who do it for
pure love can stay!
> 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.
Many communists use the argument that capitalism approaches fascism. Again,
these slippery slope arguments are reactionary. I agree that vast economic
gulfs already exist. Does it follow that the solution is to eliminate
ownership? I suspect it probably is... I imagine that ye olde communist
Russia had smaller economic gulfs than ye olde U.S. of A.
It appears to me that people who rail against the divide seem remarkably
blind to a lot of the benefits unequal distribution of weath confers.
> Ah yes, but intellectual property is being used to squash new technologies
and
> eliminate the real potential of what the internet is.
You say squash, I say foster. You say these rules are crippling our growth,
I say that they are responsible for it. (Uh, we -are- growing, right?)
--
::jason.joel.thompson::
::wild.ghost.studios::
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