Broadband Consumers to foot bill to fight Piracy

[Minischoles]

If you had more than two braincells to rub together you might understand that some of us are annoyed that these arguments quickly get stale and tired the moment some dildo with an axe to grind decides to equate copyright infringement to theft.

The argument in the OP was that it was unreasonable to pass the cost of illegal downloading on to the consumer. I questioned why this was true, since in every other industry, from the supermarket to the games seller, the cost of illegal activity is passed directly on to the consumer, no questions asked.

Do you acknowledge that downloading music which one has not paid for is an immoral act, or do you deny it? It seems to me that most people here have convinced themselves that it is actually a help to the artist.

Starglider's argument is typical. It also fails to take into account that one's basis for making purchasing decisions changes as one has access to some material for free. Once I spend all of my money on computer games in a week, I could make a similar argument that there is nothing lost by allowing me access to other games, for which I might, in the future, buy expansions.

Except as Molyneux pointed out, stealing from a supermarket is completely different to downloading something. While the cost of shoplifting may eventually reach the consumer through a small rise in prices to pay for increased security. In the case of this bill, the music industry will pay for nothing. They want it enforced - all on someone else's money, in this case the ISPs and consumers - while gaining all the profit.
They stand to gain (admittedly by their own false numbers) £1.7 billion a year, and yet they expect to not have to pay anything to enforce a law only they seem to want brought into being, considering nearly every other sector of people involved in this (including the ISPs themselves) are almost completely against the Digital Economy Bill, yet they will still be forced - yes forced, since if they don't enforce it they face very heavy fines, so they will have to send out letters and cut people off from the internet.

[Alyeska]

Free to sell something which you have already taken? There is no question of personal industry here, or incidental exposure which could not be helped: the individual who downloads a song without paying for it is demanding a particular piece of intellectual property, and refusing compensation to the original author.

If I steal a loaf of bread from you:

You cannot sell it
You cannot use it

You were physically deprived. I might or might not have paid for it else wise, but if I steal it you are physically deprived.

If I copy a game from you

You can still sell it
You can still use it.

You were not deprived of anything.

I very clearly excepted that issue from my consideration. Nice red herring.

Except it is always part of the issue. Every fucking time the industry complains about piracy, they ALWAYS count these people. These are the people the get punished along side everyone else. They are always part of the issue.

The calling for a death is utterly unreasonable, but an entirely separate issue.

You missed the point entirely. The industry wants every single person to pay to experience. They do not want people to share. Worse, they want to force people to pay just to change format.

Why not just one? The man who steals a cookie from a shopping mart is not inflicting anything more than negligible loss. He remains liable.

Its not the same fucking thing. You cannot sell a cookie that was stolen. You can still sell a game that was copied.

[Shroom Man 777]

Piracy is less like physically stealing a cookie and more like copying the Cookie Company's Cookie Recipe and making your own, cheaper, but identical cookies which people prefer to buy over the Cookie Company's branded shit-cookies.

[Wyrm]

First off, nobody here is saying that infringement is not moral, and no one should be. The problem is that Axis and Superboy are pretending that the record labels' actions to counteract copyright infringement do not in themselves cause harm to the society disproportionate to the harm supposedly inflicted upon them.

If the police killed three people at random every time they make an arrest, then the only situation where the police would be called upon to act is in the case of a mass-murderer, because only for a mass-murderer's obscenely heavy harm to the society will three deaths for his arrest be tollerated — we would even let slide a one-off murder in such a scenario.

Fortunately, police do not not use such blundering methods. However, this forum has seen how media companies abuse their power to curtail the rights of everyone else, causing the society harm for dubious gain. Furthermore, the media companies aren't doing very much to actually adapt to the internet age, rather only seeming to put roadblocks in place to try to force internet business into their existing business model.

The media companies do not have an intrinsic right to exist. The are allowed to exist because they permit the public to enjoy entertainment provided by enterntainers at the same time allowing the entertainers to make a living off of entertaining, instead of dealing in material goods. Copyright infringement is a completely different animal to property theft and it requires a completely different approach/business model to counteract. For one, I will never pirate a song, so long as iTunes has it availible: the price is cheap and getting the song is so quick and convenient that it's not worth hunting down a pirated song. However, the recording labels by and large are not dealing with the problem of copyright infringement in a coherent, responsible way, instead looking like a bunch of primitives whooping and dancing around a cooking pot with a missionary they caught as a modern mechanized army approaches.

And no, Superboy, if the media companies could wave a magic wand and make infringement go away, then they will not see more profit, but less. When copying is such a marginal cost, then artists will simply choose to distribute their content in that way, rather than going through a label. The cost of getting that content is merely to go to the artists' websites and plonk a couple of dollars in their Paypal accounts — because that's the licence fee, and remember that infrigement doesn't exist in this world so people will not use their content without paying the fee.

In short, the internet is not a piracy machine. It's a game changer, and the record labels had better recognize that fact before the public decides that they have overstayed their welcome.

[Superboy]

The problem is that Axis and Superboy are pretending that the record labels' actions to counteract copyright infringement do not in themselves cause harm to the society disproportionate to the harm supposedly inflicted upon them.

Not at all. I'm saying that their actions, however terrible, don't negate the fact that they deserve protection from illegal activity that they believe harms them. The ISPs have to foot the bill for the same reason YouTube is responsible for keeping copyrighted material off of their site.

If the recording industry were a bunch of serial killers, it still would have nothing to do with whether or not they deserve protection from illegal activity. If you want to argue that they deserve punishment for their actions, fine, but choosing to not protect them from illegal activity seems a strange way to do it, especially since it would only encourage their behavior.

And no, Superboy, if the media companies could wave a magic wand and make infringement go away, then they will not see more profit, but less.

Okay. It was really not my intention to argue this point and I concede that I'm unable to do so. I honestly believed that all agreed piracy was costing the media companies some profit.

In short, the internet is not a piracy machine. It's a game changer

,

I've heard this a lot, but how can a company adapt to the fact that the service they provide is widely available for free?

[ThomasP]

Not at all. I'm saying that their actions, however terrible, don't negate the fact that they deserve protection from illegal activity that they believe harms them.

Even if 1) the activity is only illegal because of them in the first place* and 2) that protection entails a curtailment of innovation and creativity, which is the entire purpose of copyright law?

* Current copyright law as exists in the US and most of the West is entirely due to the lobbying efforts of the content industries.

I've heard this a lot, but how can a company adapt to the fact that the service they provide is widely available for free?

Economists call this "creative destruction". That is, you adapt to your market or you go out of business.

What claim to existence do the record labels have, other than consumer demand? If the consumers no longer demand their goods, is it up to the law to make the consumers want those goods?

[Wyrm]

Not at all. I'm saying that their actions, however terrible, don't negate the fact that they deserve protection from illegal activity that they believe harms them.

The media companies only deserve protection if enforcement can be carried out in a way that causes a net reduction in harm to society, and protect them against actual harm. Otherwise, copyright law is bad law that needs to be revised or eliminated altogether. Laws, after all, are supposed to make society work better. Merely believing that an activity causes them harm doesn't cut it; enforcing copyrights in such a way to cause disproportionate harm to society to protect themselves against relatively minor harm doesn't cut it.

Language like "deserves" invokes ethics, of which the principle of least harm plays a central role in one form or another (if your ethics are coherent). An action is not ethical because it is legal, but because it causes less harm than alternatives. If the police cause wanton death and destruction by their actions anytime they are used, then it would be unethical to call for enforcement of any law unless to prevent even graver wanton death and destruction. "Legal" and "ethical" are not synonyms.

So far, media companies using draconian means have been unable to demonstrate they can curtail infringement without causing harm disproportionate to the harm actually done to them, and thus demonstrate a net reduction in harm overall.

In short, the internet is not a piracy machine. It's a game changer

I've heard this a lot, but how can a company adapt to the fact that the service they provide is widely available for free?

iTunes, which I've mentioned before, is a good start.

The fact remains that the record labels came into existence to solve the problem of distributing content to a wide audience. Now the internet has changed the world and obviated almost completely the need for large companies to distribute content, and those companies need to change the way they define themselves because the problem that necessitates their existence no longer exists.

[dominiquen]

What's the best broadband service to use in Kota Damansara? Between Streamyx, Celcom, Maxis, DiGi & Wimax broadbands, which is the best service? I desperately need a broadband connection but I'm not sure which would be the best for my area Seksyen 10, Kota Damansara.