I read these posts, and I feel like Sheldon asking Penny,"Is that sarcasm?", because I really don't want to believe you are that f'n stupid.
But they do! It is you that doesn't. Your ignorance of copyright law is demonstrated by this bullshit example. Reading, telling a joke, or singing are not protected by copyright. If you publish a book of jokes and I tell one, then it is fair use. If you publish a book of jokes and I copy it then you have a case. Geez it has taken you a long time to realize this. .
i know, little guy. again, i am not asking you what the law is. i am askin why. i know the reason. the reason is technological, not moral. you simply cant stop people from stealing jokes. the same is now true about books and music and all media. they were morally equivalent the entire time. i know you are at a mental impaase and cant comute anything other than mindlessly repeating what the law is. if i tell your jokes i am stealing the fruit of your labors for my own profit. this is a moral question, but again, i know you only understand what the law is and cant be bothered to ever think about anything.
But he does have a deeper concept. You claim that your beliefs are moral, yet your words do not match up. They do match up with the law, which is unique in that it only applies to certain forms of so called "lost income". We are not stupid, we know what the law says. We simply do not agree with it. Way back when, when these threads started and even in this one, people on your side of the belief system said it is "about creators being paid for their work." You call file sharing stealing, according to the law it is, but again, you say this is a moral belief in you and the law just happens to be on your side. If it is really about income and paying creators for their work, then you should never loan a book and TELL all your friends to go buy it. The creator needs to be paid, right? We are past the issue of legal and even the issue of "just because its easy, its OK!" Technology makes EVERYTHING EASIER.... So whats the point in that? Cars also allow you to meet your friends faster to loan them a CD, Movie, or Book... Everyone on this thread, including you and RED would still loan books, CD's, and Movies if it was made illegal tomorrow. However, I am sure Red will post some remark to say " I haven't a clue what he would do." I haven't seen a moral answer yet out of either of you or Red. You cannot post a response into the act of sharing information without referring to the law. A digital file will always be information. Call it what you want and even side with the law, its not the point of this debate. You nor Red can't even begin to win the argument or prove your point because neither of you have yet to engage in the discussion offered. Why is file sharing, songs, books, movies, etc.... immoral? What is the driving force behind this act being immoral and the physical nature of loaning not? You cannot possibly formulate and answer without your citing copyright laws can you?
No he doesn't. He just has contempt for the law. This law, at any rate. Also the one concerning marijuana. You have absolutely no grounds for making such a character judgement about me. I have given you no reason to think my only objection to file sharing is that it is illegal. My very first post on this issue pointed out that I believe "file sharing" is a euphemism people use to justify what is in fact "stealing." Yes, I get that. What kind of society would we have if we all only followed the laws we agreed with? Yes, or put another way, its a law I happen to agree with. Why does this concept bring out so much scrutiny? Are there no laws you agree with? Wrong.....again. The creator gets paid for selling the unit (the song, the book, etc.). If you feel he must get paid every time the book is read or the song is listened to, then the original buyer should also pay every time. Oh, I forgot, you don't think he deserves to get paid at all. Of course you're past it, because you can't refute it. Once upon a time, the longest reaching weapon man had was the bow and arrow. It only had a range of a hundred yards or so, and its accuracy was a joke. Now we have rifles that can hit a man in the head at a range of a thousand yards or more. Since technology has made killing so much easier, maybe we should make murder legal. Either something is morally wrong or it isn't. You're sure about that? I haven't a clue what kind of remark Red will post. I've done it repeatedly. I'll do it again. File sharing is a euphemism used by people who want to justify their stealing of other people's intellectual property. in·for·ma·tion [in-fer-mey-shuhn] noun 1. knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance; news: information concerning a crime. 2. knowledge gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc.; factual data: His wealth of general information is amazing. 3. the act or fact of informing. OK, so maybe "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Ray Horton fits that definition, but I suspect that one's not getting a lot of file sharing action. Well, you're right about one thing.....you can't win an argument with someone who doesn't care if they're wrong. OK, up to now, my responses have been somewhat pithy. But since you've pulled out the red text, I will now try to go straightforward and direct: Loaning is the act of willfully giving another person a piece of property with the expectation of it being returned. File sharing is the act of allowing another person to copy (create an additional unit of the original product) an electronic version of a song, movie, etc. Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you consider yourself a moral person, I will assume you do not shoplift. You do understand that shoplifting is stealing, right? So you don't walk into a CD store and pocket the latest Carrie Underwood release. You put your cash on the counter and pay for it. The music is Carrie's product. If she were a potato farmer, you wouldn't walk into her potato field and help yourself, would you? That would be stealing, and we've just agreed you're a moral person. Music is Carrie's potato. Not the CD, the music. Once upon a time, she would have put her music on a vinyl disc. Later, on recording tape. Are you beginning to understand? The CD is only the medium that Carrie uses to distribute her product. By the same token, if the music is on a computer file, it is only the medium of distribution that has changed. Try this; 150 years ago, Carrie Underwood, potato farmer, would have got her potatoes to market by horse-drawn carriage. You're telling me that because trains and trucks have made it easier for Carrie to get her potatoes to market, that we shouldn't have to pay for them anymore. Does that make sense? Anyone? Anyone? I've done it a few times in this post alone. Pretending your opponent's response does not exist is a poor debating tactic.
"What kind of society would we have if we all only followed the laws we agreed with?" - What kind of society would we have if we let slavery remain legal? "So you don't walk into a CD store and pocket the latest Carrie Underwood release. You put your cash on the counter and pay for it. The music is Carrie's product." - Says you. I bought it and can choose do with it what I like as long as I do not profit from her works....... This is the meat of it. The music will always be hers, I now own the file. It is mine as I paid for it. I can see fit to share. "If she were a potato farmer, you wouldn't walk into her potato field and help yourself, would you?" - If I was starving, yes.. I would. As would many good, honest, and moral people if they had no other option... "Not the CD, the music." - And the music will remain hers as the file I purchased is now mine. "The CD is only the medium that Carrie uses to distribute her product. By the same token, if the music is on a computer file, it is only the medium of distribution that has changed." - And the content of the book is the product, not the paperback. Yet, you judge it fit to ALLOW people to freely not purchase the content in the act of loaning. the content is still used now and freely shared into your friends brain. He/she now knows the content of the story told. How are we so different? "Try this; 150 years ago, Carrie Underwood, potato farmer, would have got her potatoes to market by horse-drawn carriage. You're telling me that because trains and trucks have made it easier for Carrie to get her potatoes to market, that we shouldn't have to pay for them anymore. Does that make sense? Anyone? Anyone?" Carrie will still sell potato's if she likes. However as cars, trucks, and trains come along, Carrie is not the only person at the market. I can buy her potato and use it to plant more..... More areas where potato's are grown now, increasing the people who now have access to them. Or I may choose to drive further, to a cheaper potato, or even a farmer who lets me try a potato for free before I buy. "Pretending your opponent's response does not exist is a poor debating tactic." No, simply pointing out what is in fact true about 90% of responses to the argument presented. We know the law, but law most certainty is not a just cause for moral character. "Wrong.....again. The creator gets paid for selling the unit (the song, the book, etc.). If you feel he must get paid every time the book is read or the song is listened to, then the original buyer should also pay every time. Oh, I forgot, you don't think he deserves to get paid at all." - I never said I don't think they should get paid, you are putting words in my mouth.... I said that in the action of loaning, you have prevented a sale. That is all, no different from file sharing... If file sharing cost money, we wouldn't be talking about stealing now would we? On the topic of legal "Of course you're past it, because you can't refute it." - Women's rights, slaves, the list goes on. People refute laws every day.. Hispanics are doing it as we speak in Arizona. "Are there no laws you agree with?" - I agree with tons, however I refuse to accept all laws as a way of life simply because it is law. We as a free people have that right.
You're right, we should legalize file sharing before the nation is split and millions die in a civil war. Thank you for demonstrating why the legal component of the argument is necessary. Also, I rescind my previous notion that you understand the moral aspect of the debate. Now I understand; your very survival depends on your freedom to steal music. The difference is I understand the difference between loaning and stealing. You've said nothing that justifies your stealing Carrie's potatoes. You are now employing the Martin-esque debate tactic of being deliberately obtuse, right. What don't you get about the fact that when someone loans you something, YOU DON'T KEEP IT? Wait, I thought you simply see this as a moral issue. You want the law changed? Write your congressman, and good luck.
If you give a vague example, you'll surely get a vague answer. But sure, file sharing and slavery go hand in hand. The legal argument is not necessary at all. A file will always be a file and duplicating will always be duplicating. Umm, you asked if I would ever steal a potato, remember? I would hope an honest man like yourself would also steal food for your family if you had no other option, it would be a silly way to die with a field full of potato's there... The difference is you do not know the difference. Duplicating is duplicating. Duplicating certain files has been deemed naughty... You should go back and read again, I said I bought her potato...Then replanted it. And you are being deliberately obtuse to really think that every time you loan a book, they will rush out and go buy it. It is still a form of lost income. Has nothing to do with file sharing. I never said I wanted the law changed as of yet, though it would be nice. I simply do not agree with it. This is not a simple black and white issue as much as you would like it to be. Here is a good article: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-healey18feb18,0,5092348.story "In "The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism", the economist and Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek explains the difference between conventional property rights and copyright. While the supply of material resources is limited by nature, the supply of an immaterial good [is] unlimited, unless the government limits the supply by law . A later Nobel Prize winner, Milton Friedman, describes copyright as a monopoly that decreases supply to a level below the optimal level. Copyright and the regulations that follow from it should, according to Friedman, be described primarily as a limitation of free speech. In essence, Sigfrid is saying that something in unlimited supply can't be stolen. His position is a variation on a theme advanced by Mike Masnick of Techdirt.com, among others: that the entertainment industry's aggressive copyright-enforcement efforts spring from an outdated, analog-era notion of scarcity. Under this view, copyright holders are helped, not harmed, by file sharing and other online distribution pipelines; they just haven't adapted their business models to take advantage of the new opportunities. Supporters of this view include musicians, authors and filmmakers who say that that file sharing helped bring the exposure they needed to sell their works." "As Sigfrid noted, there's a fundamental difference between intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trademarks) and real property (houses, cars, plasma TVs): The latter is tangible and limited in supply, the former is not. "Copyright infringement is not 'theft' in the same way that taking a CD from a store is theft," said Mark Lemley, a copyright expert at Stanford University Law School. "If I take your physical property, I have it and you no longer do. If I copy your song, I have it, but so do you." "The imagery associated with infringement also affects debates over other aspects of copyrights, such as how long they should last and who should be responsible for stopping piracy. Likening them to real property tilts the debate by making copyrights seem immutable, when in fact they have a specific social goal: "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," as the Constitution states in Article I. Achieving that goal means balancing the interests of content creators against the public's, which is a much more complicated task than erecting a legal barrier to five-fingered discounts." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/o...ll&adxnnlx=1333108962-MMcE/mz1IjRA34OYsq88Ag# "The problem is that most people simply don’t buy the claim that illegally downloading a song or video from the Internet really is like stealing a car. According to a range of empirical studies, including one conducted by me and my social psychologist collaborator, Matthew Kugler, lay observers draw a sharp moral distinction between file sharing and genuine theft, even when the value of the property is the same." "We would do better to consider a range of legal concepts that fit the problem more appropriately: concepts like unauthorized use, trespass, conversion and misappropriation."
