Comment by bmelton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmelton | Hacker News Reader

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Copyright's a complicated issue, to be sure, but I make things, and I believe that the things I make are mine. If I open source those things, as I often do, that's a different conversation -- cause when I don't open source them, then I'm not giving them away.

If somebody owns something, it's not mine to take from them, even if I want it really badly.

On the flip side of the conversation, if someone posts something on one of my websites, it isn't my place to tell them "No, you can't do that". The only exceptions to that are for obviously spam messages and attempts at breaking the site (whether phishing, hacking or whatever).

The easy answer for me, that I made long ago, was to just not allow self-image hosting, which at least defers some of the harder decisions to somebody else, and thus far has saved me from having to deal with lawyers or cops, except for one situation, which was... awkward.

Thankfully, I haven't run into any issues of plagiarism to my knowledge, because those would be obviously infringing, and I wouldn't be able to pass the buck to anyone but me.

Edit: Oh, and thanks. That was all I meant to type originally, but for some reason, I'm exceptionally wordy tonight.

"If somebody owns something, it's not mine to take from them, even if I want it really badly."

That's the crux of much of the copyright debate, right there. Copying doesn't take someone's work from them, he or she still has access to it. Right or wrong, good or bad, it's not theft. Unfortunately, much of the public debate surrounding copyright circles around appeals to emotion about how much like theft copyright violation is.

Personally, I'd say not at all. It might be similar conversion -- the use of someone's property without their permission -- but I'm not sure about that.

There's also the "thingness" of a work. In the usual sense, even if your first copy of a work is a thing, it's not the same thing as a copy of it. And copyright necessarily acknowledges that, as the property like component is not the work, but the copyright itself. So the thing that is (sort of) yours -- if it exists enough to call it a thing -- is not the thing you created, it's the legal instrument that controls replication of the thing you created.

You're right, copyright is complicated. But it's not so complicated that confusing it with possession or ownership of physical property is a useful approximation.

My personal believe system is something along the lines of

1) Copy isn't theft, copy and modify/reuse is very central to human learning etc.*

2) If I copy something I can still pay for it because it's "the right thing to do" (especially if I profit from the copy in any way) and/or because I want the original content creator to continue doing what he/she does

*The law is usually not on this side, don't forget that. I try to follow most laws if they don't offend me too much.

> Copying doesn't take someone's work from them, he or she still has access to it. Right or wrong, good or bad, it's not theft.

This is probably an incomplete conception of theft.

For example if you steal a TV, the value of the theft is set at the retail price of the TV, even though the store only paid wholesale. That is because you have deprived them of not only the TV itself, but also the revenue they could have earned by selling the TV.

Digital copies are so cheap that the "wholesale" is effectively zero, so it's true that the owner is not deprived of any property. But there is still the question of the opportunity to earn revenue.

> For example if you steal a TV, the value of the theft is set at the retail price of the TV, even though the store only paid wholesale. That is because you have deprived them of not only the TV itself, but also the revenue they could have earned by selling the TV.

However, it is important to note that by copying digital content you don't prevent the retailer from selling the content to another customer.

"Copying doesn't take someone's work from them, he or she still has access to it."

Understood, but as I guess I didn't state myself very well, I personally choose that it's theirs to control distribution of as well, so much as they're able.

I always think of it in a 'tragedy of the commons' sense -- what if everybody did it? What would happen then? And in the case of many of my favorite artists, if everybody pirated their work, they'd be insolvent, and likely stop making my favorite songs.

In similar comparison, what if I stood on your yard? You still have your yard. I haven't taken anything from you at all. I'm just in your yard. What if I invite 200 people to stand in your yard. What if we stand in your house?

Anyway, like I said, it's complicated, and I don't begrudge anyone for where they fall on the particular spectrum, because I by no means have what I consider 'ironclad' arguments that aren't informed by my own bias. That said, I choose to err on the side of respect for copyright.

The yard analogy doesn't work. You can't stand in a certain place in your yard when someone else is standing there. They are denying you the use of your property, however temporarily. The same goes for people standing in your house (which brings up privacy problems that are orthogonal to intellectual property). There are also maintenance costs - your yard might be ruined by hundreds of people walking over it, and you'd have to pay for its upkeep.

Those are both good reasons for protecting physical private property that don't apply to ideas.

No, I didn't mean to make a big deal out of it. You're right that the yard analogy doesn't work -- but that's the problem, there's no analogy that does, not completely. I agree that it was poorly thought, but it was late, and as I hadn't heard the yard analogy before, my sleep-deprived brain thought it was somewhat novel. In retrospect, I agree that it wasn't.

I simply choose to respect the creator's wishes. If they hadn't created it, I wouldn't have been able to get enjoyment out of it, and to me, that's worth something. Yes, I appreciate that copying something isn't necessarily theft, but it does violate their wishes, and that seems a poor way to repay someone for creating something I like so much that I would consider taking it.

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