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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33461 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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If someone stops writing music/painting things/writing novels/invent anything because of the piracy - i think that's great. There's no intellectual property, there are thoughts, ideas, music and so on, but if its not an object it can't be property, it's silly.

The world is full of useless crap anyway, everything will be fine with less of that, in fact everyone will be much better. People will do art not because of money but because they love it, seems like a win-win. Good musicians will still live luxuries lifestyles because they'll earn tons of money on life concerts. There will be less crap to consume sitting on the sofa the whole day, great! A lot of people will lose their jobs - fine, it wasn't doing anything anyway.

It was my opinion at the start of internet and it didn't change since. The moral arguments against piracy are usually going in the way of "it's not fair" and then showcasing the case when some poor guy creates something genius and he is still poor and unknown, while some huge corporation makes billions out of his work. And i agree - it doesn't feel fair, that corporation which makes billions abusing intellectual property rights shouldn't exist at all.

Looking at the whole humans history there's plenty of various famous people in any type of human activity, despite the fact that there wasn't any intellectual property rights at that time. Somehow Mozart was rich and famous despite the fact that literally anybody can play his works without paying anything to him. No doubt there were plenty of people who died poor and miserable despite creating something great, but it's still the case now. Maybe Mozart could have been much richer with the intellectual property laws, sure, but why is it "more fair"? A random historical person who invented let's say cheddar cheese and couldn't patent it at that time - he surely has all the possibilities to benefit from his invention even without property rights. He probably wasn't a billionaire because of that automatically, so what, why is it fair for him to be one?

This all falls apart rapidly on works that require actual spending to make. Good luck funding the millions of dollars it takes to produce a AAA video game without the possibility of ROI. Not everything can be a one man operation that can afford to live lean.

It's totally alright even if there won't be any AAA video games anymore, people were playing pacmans and supermarios with no less pleasure than AAA games. Humans are made the way that the amount of pleasure is always scaled up or down to some more or less constant level. Hoop rolling is an amazing game if it's the only game you know. And if you have 100 AAA games a year it just deflates the amount of pleasure you'll have from each one, to the point when you're just bored of all of them. It's programmed in human nervous system. The same for everything else. People before computer games weren't any less happy just because they couldn't play them.

Besides, there's always a crowdfunding which as practice shows can support anything - from couple of developers for the whole life(Dwarf Fortress) to half a billion of dollars for promising a dream(Star Citizen).

I find it hard to view a world with less and lower quality art/media but all of it is free as better than a world with higher quality art/media but only most of it is free and what isn't is easily affordable to someone with a very achievable income.

The former seems clearly better to me. Profit motive is very poorly aligned with what we admire in artistic expression.

Then feel free to exclusively consume art created by anti-capitalists who distribute their works for free. You'll have much more than in the past. What right do you have to the works of people who have specifically decided not to go with this model? Why do you think you're entitled to free ride off of those of us who support greater works?

I personally find that the framework of some kind of "rights" you guys like to use is full of nonsense, to the point when i'm not really sure why do you like to use it.

But if you want i can tell you which right - i fully support the right of private property, when if you bought something - it's yours. Like fully yours, not asterisk yours, you know what i mean? So if someone bought the game let's say and wants to share it with anyone he wants - he can do it. And i can download it from him and someone else can download it from me. I'm fully aware that some(SOME!) artists and much bigger cohort of businessman don't like that simple copyable nature of digital media and they don't see it as fair, but you know what - tough luck.

I understand that it leads the world towards the model of "you're not buying it but renting, it's not fully yours, you just bought the right to play it for your eyes only" and i applaud it, that would be a hilariously amazing dystopia when the common sense is completely forsaken in favor of Moloch.

The system we have is set out to solve a very difficult problem. There is substantial upfront cost to produce some information and in order to incentivize that production of data the prospective producers need some way to capture some of the value produced by the upfront investment otherwise there would be no upfront investment. Those options are as follows:

  1. government sponsored investment(A.K.A. everyone is forced to pay whether they want to or not)

  2. intellectual property rights to the fruits of the investment

  3. some scheme where people who want something to be produced pool their money and are just fine with the free riders

  4. the information is simply not produced

There is no secret extra option where there is upfront investment but nobody needs to pay. You can't have people do #2 and then decide that you're going to pretend they did #3 because you still want to be a free rider.

And it's all fine and good to scoff at like pop media or whatever but this problem becomes very real when the thing the upfront investment is in is some cancer cure that you're going to die without. You very very much do not want that to end up in the #4 trap and that the only place it can end up with your beliefs.

I mean, I have no qualms about biting the bullet with #4 and I am someone who would almost certainly be dead of a childhood illness in that world. Humanity does not deserve those things that would not have been produced without the current legal incentive structure.

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There is substantial upfront cost to produce some information and in order to incentivize that production of data the prospective producers need some way to capture some of the value produced by the upfront investment otherwise there would be no upfront investment.

I'm not sure how it's my problem. My rights are not up for debate and i have right to do anything i want with my private property. And frankly if you're shifting the whole debate into removing my right to private property or diluting it with asterisks and "subscription model" contractual obligations - it's you who's being unethical, not me. Whether you're doing it for your own benefit or for poorly understood "common good" doesn't matter.

You can't have people do #2 and then decide that you're going to pretend they did #3 because you still want to be a free rider.

I'm not advocating for #2 at all, so i'm not sure how it's relevant.

And it's all fine and good to scoff at like pop media or whatever but this problem becomes very real when the thing the upfront investment is in is some cancer cure that you're going to die without.

There's plenty of ways to extort money from me which sound like they're for the greater good, it's still extortion though.

You very very much do not want that to end up in the #4 trap and that the only place it can end up with your beliefs.

No, the history shows that its not how it ends with my beliefs, you're not saying that "the information was simply not produced" before the intellectual property rights were a thing, are you?

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The world with "lower quality art/media" is basically the whole planet Earth before the second half of 20th century, roughly. The claim that we're now living in a high quality art time comparing to any previous times isn't obvious to me. There's definitely more art, but not better. The effect of "more art" on people is the subject of severe diminishing returns i would say.

The fact that the intellectual property system incentivizes people financially to create "art" purely to sell, and not when you're passionate about that so you CAN'T NOT write/paint/sing/etc leads to various things like producer projects(99% of modern movies/AAA games, which don't have anything to do with creating art, just with pleasuring proles after careful testing/probing whether it'll be successfull or not). It's not exactly art.

You are perfectly capable of living in the old way, simply only use and consume the free stuff. You want to have your cake and eat it too, an understandable desire but not an ethical one. Artists have gotten together and said they are willing to create larger works of art on the condition that you pay them for it. You are reneging on their condition and worse, you're sneering at them for having the gall to even try.

Artists have gotten together and said they are willing to create larger works of art on the condition that you pay them for it.

That's nice. Have I agreed to that? I don't think I have. If I have not, then regardless of whether or not they make those works, I am not bound by that condition.

That's nice. Have I agreed to that? I don't think I have. If I have not, then regardless of whether or not they make those works, I am not bound by that condition.

Someone who purchased the content and then copied it has violated the agreement, you are an accessory to the violation of the compact. And you know damn well when you do it that you're participating in violating this compact. People who knowingly fence stolen goods are behaving unethically.

you are an accessory to the violation of the compact

So? I'm not a party to this compact. No privity of contract here.

People who knowingly fence stolen goods are behaving unethically.

This is begging the question, since you have not established that "copied without permission" is equivalent to "stolen".

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No, the current system doesn't seem good or fair to me so i want it to change. You sound like the only "ethical" thing to do in the world is following contractual obligations no matter what they are, "well, if you don't like it - don't participate in it". No, it's not so simple, the alternative is not always unethical and it's not how it works in practice, luckily.

Then advocate for artists to freely give away their content, a model like patreon where you support artists and get minor perks seems viable. But you have no right to the works of people who are not operating on that model. They have produced their works on the condition that you pay for them and do not copy them, breaking that condition is unethical.

I've already answered that. And no, thanks, i'll do it differently to your proposal.

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Artists have gotten together and said they are willing to create larger works of art on the condition that you pay them for it.

Some artists have. Other artists have demonstrated that people will willingly give them money for things they make even if they don't require it, merely out of admiration of the work and admiration of the artist. Others will pay them up-front because they're a good investment. I observe that most of the artists I admire and care about are in this later set, and a lot of the artists in the former range from terminally boring to actively toxic.

The arrangement you describe isn't a moral fact of the universe, but rather a social construction. As with most social constructions, it exists while people agree to maintain it. If people don't want to maintain it any more, it goes away, and the people who benefited from it are out of luck. Copyright protections are of immediate advantage to artists, but deriving advantage from something is not the same as having a right to that thing. I would derive great advantage from everyone paying me significant sums of money in exchange for my assessment of their individual moral character. I do not have a right to such payment, do I?

Some artists have. Other artists have demonstrated that people will willingly give them money for things they make even if they don't require it, merely out of admiration of the work and admiration of the artist. Others will pay them up-front because they're a good investment. I observe that most of the artists I admire and care about are in this later set, and a lot of the artists in the former range from terminally boring to actively toxic.

Cool, consume their art and let the rest of us plebeians pay for art.

The arrangement you describe isn't a moral fact of the universe, but rather a social construction

A social construct indeed and even more than that a contract, an agreement between people that you advocate for wantonly violating. Other neat social constructs we have are the ones where you have to pay at the store before leaving with goods, not committing random acts of violence and not cheating on medical board exams.

I would derive great advantage from everyone paying me significant sums of money in exchange for my assessment of their individual moral character. I do not have a right to such payment, do I?

you would have a right to one if I had an agreement with you that I'd pay you for such an assessment. But we don't, and as such you can either give it to me for free or keep it to yourself. Someone in the chain of piracy has violated such an agreement.

If we just ignore all the obscurantism this is a very simple system:

  • someone produces something and is willing to let you have a copy of it on the condition that you don't copy it

  • You want this copy

  • you or somebody else breaks the compact and copies it anyways

I cannot fathom how you have convinced yourself that this is ethical.

A social construct indeed and even more than that a contract, an agreement between people that you advocate for wantonly violating.

Yeah, that happens with social contracts sometimes. They're based on popular consent, and that consent can be withdrawn. If it is, they go away, and the people who relied on them have no real recourse. This is typically most unfortunate for those people, but that's just... reality. I don't value the social contract you're appealing to, and I don't particularly value the goods it delivers, so I see no practical purpose in upholding it.

Other neat social constructs we have are the ones where you have to pay at the store before leaving with goods, not committing random acts of violence and not cheating on medical board exams.

Yes, and I agree that those should be upheld, because they and the results they produce seem valuable to me, not because vague, informal social contracts should be upheld at all costs.

you would have a right to one if I had an agreement with you that I'd pay you for such an assessment.

Suppose I argued that we have a "social contract" that you have to make such an agreement with me. Suppose it's even true, we pass a law and everything! Would you still argue that you're morally required to pay? There's nothing innately preventing a social contract from being stupid or evil. We make rules because we think they lead to good outcomes, not for the love of rule-making and -following.

someone produces something and is willing to let you have a copy of it on the condition that you don't copy it

You want this copy

you or somebody else breaks the compact and copies it anyways

This is bad if demanding people not copy things is a reasonable thing to do. It's not, though. The right to copy data and ideas is much, much more valuable than all data and ideas that have ever existed, and trading the former for the latter is such a bad deal that attempting to enforce it is fundamentally repugnant. Copyright was maybe a good idea when and how it was originally implemented. Its current application as the cornerstone of immortal socially-toxic megacorporations is absurd and awful. I have the power to withdraw my consent, and so I do.

I cannot fathom how you have convinced yourself that this is ethical.

By the belief that law and morality do not perfectly overlap. Sometimes laws, customs and norms are wrong, and should be pulled down.

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Pirates want something, but not enough to pay the asking price. What gives them the right to skip it?

What gives you the right to control who has a copy of an arbitrary collection of bits?

Assuming I am the one who originally figured out how to arrange them in a specific format, I have an interest in the fruit of my labor.

If I were spending all my time doing literal charity, I would rapidly starve.

And do you think that this is a good description of more copyright situations?

Not…particularly. OP asked why people thought it was unethical to pirate. I answered:

Pirates would like to have something that belongs to someone else. That is obviously unethical, violating the rights of the creator or license-holder. It is also easy to rationalize, since any harms are very diffuse. But it is still a harm.

In today’s world, piracy does little harm, and may even be a net gain. This does not justify piracy in general.

I don't need any right to skip it, i can just skip it. What kind of right is that?

To skip the asking price?

Then i guess my right is called a free will.

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