Last time someone uttered something similar, I didn't get an answer, so I'll ask it to you: what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
Last time someone uttered something similar, I didn't get an answer, so I'll ask it to you: what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
This: The basic idea of freedom, that I should be able to generally do things including accessing media without interference from a third party.
Someone using a physical property can possibly deprive others of its use. This applies to the physical mediums of songs, movies, or books, but not the songs, movies, or text of the books themselves.
Intellectual property isn't real, it's a concept that exists to support copyright, which exists for this exact purpose stated in the Constitution:
"[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I'm ok with accepting a temporary limitation on my freedom to support those who make songs, movies, or books, but life of the author + 70 years, plus the ability to assign the right to corporations which don't die, is not reasonably "limited" these days. It should be something like 5 years today.
No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or author; society needs people doing other things too.
> life of the author + 70 years ...
So you object to its current implementation, not to the principle itself, which is what I was replying to. I agree it's absurd, especially when the rights can be transferred to corporations, which cannot even create.
> No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or author; society needs people doing other things too.
Isn't that up to the individual to decide?
Provided a friend of mine agrees to let me borrow (and copy) their media containing music / movie / book / whatever, what entitles you to interfere with such agreement?
Especially since that agreement didn't involve you.
There's no $deity-given right to control what happens to stuff you wrote / designed etc, once it's been published. Copyright is, sorry was, a legal construct meant to promote people creating artwork.
Once it overshot that intent bigtime, there's no justification for keeping it around. At least not in its current form.
Because it’s effectively free to copy.
I want copyright to be completely abolished and patronage to re-become normal and common. Most of my favorite artists already distribute most of their work for free and rely on the latter.
> Most of my favorite artists already distribute most of their work for free
Excellent. It already works. You don't have to abolish copyright.
What entitles you to use force to stop me creating a copy of something?
Not me, the state. That is significantly different.
The reason is damaging someone's livelihood in the cases I mentioned. Or large scale economic damage in case you're copying money.
The comparison with money is interesting but not equivalent to copyright infringement. The closest valid application of the concept of counterfeit to songs, for example, would involve using them to make media and its packaging look like any original packaging, and also try to sell it as the original. If you're not doing this there's no counterfeiture.
Should it be illegal to use a general purpose computing device because it damages Tim Cook's livelihood?
The fact that you use the state as a proxy changes little.
>what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
Does this sound profound to you? When you see yourself type it out, does it seem like you've really came up with a zinger?
What entitles them to come in and police my hard drive platters with "you can't write that sequence of bits to storage, that's our sequence of bits"? It's sort of a weird idea, sounds kind of medieval. Like King Cnut has granted them license to "the birds in the forest, and the timber, and the water that runs through the meadows".
Ok. So nobody answers the question, but does so in a very passive-aggressive way.
Your question is a loaded question founded on a false premise that the author of the content has an innate right to its viewership. There is no such innate right.
Also, the argument that you made elsewhere about "damages" is nonsense because there is no damage from someone viewing what they were never going to pay for anyway, and there also is no deprivation.
> Your question is a loaded question
It is not. Abolishing copyright completely, as the parent seems to desire, implies free access to songs, books, movies.
> a false premise that the author of the content has an innate right to its viewership
If you pose it this way: can't creators decide who gets access to their creations? Is it not inherently theirs? What's the difference with e.g. a piece of bread?
> there is no damage ...
So it's legal to steal stuff that you were never going to buy anyway?
> can't creators decide who gets access to their creations?
If it's on their physical property.
> Is it not inherently theirs?
No. For example, a creator of a song does not own my hard drive.
> What's the difference with e.g. a piece of bread?
Operating system calls used in copying data locally and sending/receiving network data locally/remotely fail on pieces of bread, but don't on a series of bits that when given to an .mp3 player make sound.
> So it's legal to steal stuff that you were never going to buy anyway?
Saying somethng is stealing X is a false premise if the owner is not deprived of X. Saying X is depriving Y of future profits is false unless you know for a fact that X was going buy anything from Y.