When did I agree to that?
That first sentence sounds outraged and pointed, but it's not; it's a serious question. Every time this issue comes up, I feel like I read people making similar points, as if they were remotely convincing. I really want to know who, among all the people who are not already on your side on this issue, you think would be persuaded by the logic that "I didn't have a contract with the producer of _Wall-E_, and so I'm not obligated to pay them before downloading and watching their movie." It seems to me that a child can see where the obligation to pay comes from.
The law defines property. Just because IP has different traits then physical property does not make it more real; they are both useful fictions that form the foundation of a functional society. The laws encode our social norms and ideas about property. There is an entirely different set of laws which encodes acceptable behaviors in business practices, such as contract law, which is somewhat of a different area.
There is some very good arguments to be made that the current definitions of intellectual property are severely flawed, and haven't been updated to reflect our social perception or technical needs about what should or shouldn't be property. But there is no reason why "no IP enforcement" is inherently the right solution.
See Against Intellectual Property, by Stephan Kinsella: http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another.
I'm not sure why you feel I would disagree with that, or why would that contradict my position. I'm not a believer in natural laws.
So yes, you didn't. But if you don't agree, you shouldn't watch it. It's a simple deal, regardless of whether or not technology means you could.
Otherwise you can turn it around and ask "when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying" which is pretty similar to the case described here, just replace watching with using.
Why?
when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying
If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people?
It's against the law.
> If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people?
This argument makes no sense. You can play the music you bought for other people for free, just like giving a free car ride. You did in fact pay for the Toyota, just like you would to purchase an album.
The courts in my jurisdiction disagree, but in any case, I wasn't making a legal argument, but an ethical one. Unless of course you consider that any illegal activity is necessarily unethical, in which case we have nothing to discuss.
You can play the music you bought for other people for free
Not freely, I can't, only under the very restrictive limits of fair use. But I grant you the analogy isn't good. In any case, the point stands: why should I get to decide who can do what with the works (in my case, software) I produce, after I sell them?
A free society implies that should be the default, with well justified exceptions. I don't see decent justifications for copyright.
Why does that make any more sense for instantly-reproducible, yet still not instantly-creatable, goods than for physical ones?
The fact that the latter are scarce and rivalrous. Private property is a mechanism to prevent/reduce conflicts. But I'm not opposed to suggestions for alternative mechanisms either.
I don't know that I agree. I'm more inclined to view private property as a mechanism to encourage productive use of land and other scarce resources. And I see creativity/time/inspiration as a scarce resource.
Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post:
"We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements and I certainly never agreed to donating or selling any copyright of my work without a licensing fee."
So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar.
Let's test that: to read this post, you must agree to pay me 5BTC. Have you now committed an illegality? I guess not.
Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post
He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again?
So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
Sure they should, by whoever has an (explicit or implicit) agreement to pay them. Thankfully I haven't, but I still like to reward them when I can for all the joy they brought me.
Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute.
> He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again?
I read it, your prior post was very short. See my quote above directly from his blog post; there wasn't any contract.
I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading.
Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.
Canada: http://archive.is/W0mdI
Netherlands: http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-parliament-downloading-movies-...
Spain: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/spanish-pirate-site-owners-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fastlink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Site_Down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Buccaneer
Note: Just because I don't have any cases offhand of my friends fined for jaywalking, doesn't mean it isn't against the law.
> Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.
I don't know much about the Dutch law, but it is supplemented by a 'piracy tax', ie, storage devices are more expensive to purchase among other things.
That's putting your arguments into the realm of faith. If those three citations are any indication, your faith is misplaced. All of those were for people doing distribution (e.g. uploading). None of them were for downloading.
I don't think it is much to ask for you to have just one definite case to back up your claim that the legality of downloading is not in dispute. Just one.
Here's one for jaywalking: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/raquel-nelson-jai...
As a point of order, the surest way to admit you are wrong is to tell the other person to "google it." It isn't anyone else's job to prove you are right.
Actually, not where I live. But the point is that the situations are different, because I don't have an agreement with any artist. Whether that makes it illegal to use copyright works was not the issue in discussion. What was being discussed was the supposed hypocrisy of anti-copyright people.
there wasn't any contract.
There's was an implied agreement. Whether he has a legal foot to stand on is irrelevant to this discussion, because we weren't talking about the legality of the situation, but what it should be.
There is also an implied agreement that when an artist asks you to pay $12 for a CD, that you pay for it. This isn't very hard to understand.
Some things are just part of societal existence. You can't opt out of them any more than you can opt out of paying your taxes on profits you make.
That's a particularly poor example.
Supreme Court Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
In case you can't get past the paywall (try googling the title and going from there), the summary is that a woman got a protective court order and then she called police and told them her husband had violated the court order. They did not act, and he killed her three kids.
If a court order with explicit instructions to arrest should it be violated isn't enough to move the police into action, simply encountering you isn't worth a hill of beans.