Europe votes on anti-piracy laws

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by slayda

Harry, if "shares" are not something physical, then the entirety of ownership, e.g. the title to your car, is also not something physical. 'nuff said.

Absolutely right. As Nate said, very correctly,

IP would not exist without having been legislated into existense.

"Ownership" only exists as a result of such things as contract law. You pay the car dealer $x; in return you "own" the car. The car is a physical object; the concept of "owning" it certainly isn't - it's simply a legal abstraction which specifies that you have certain rights to it that other people do not.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I mean, Tommy, that if I have proof that a machine with a specific IP address is offering my copyrighted material for download illegally, I should have a right to be able to obtain the name and address of the person whose internet connection is being used from their ISP. That seems reasonable to me. Why should a criminal be able to hide behind a "cloak of anonymity"?

What do you mean by right? Why should you have that right? Why is this a right that is more important than privacy? Should police have the right to have cameras in ever house?

What you have is a situation with conflicting interests. Why do you choose one interest and make that very important and starts calling it a right?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

What do you mean by right? Why should you have that right? Why is this a right that is more important than privacy? Should police have the right to have cameras in ever house?

What you have is a situation with conflicting interests. Why do you choose one interest and make that very important and starts calling it a right?

Because the right to be protected by the law is enshrined in all the democracies in which we are fortunate enough to live. If I cannot find out who has committed a crime, I cannot obtain the penalty from that person that the law says I am entitled to. In that situation I think personally that the right of the victim to obtain the identity of the criminal is more important than the criminal's right to anonymity.

If a speed camera takes a photograph of your car speeding, then at least here in the UK you are not allowed to refuse to tell the police who was driving the car at the time. You have, by law, to provide that information.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Ownership" only exists as a result of such things as contract law. You pay the car dealer $x; in return you "own" the car. The car is a physical object; the concept of "owning" it certainly isn't - it's simply a legal abstraction which specifies that you have certain rights to it that other people do not.

Ownership existed before contract law. Said law only quantified it.

On the other hand, copyright did not exist before copyright law.

[HarryT]

As a matter of practicality, copyright law was not required until the invention of the printing press made low-cost printing a practical proposition. In the days before printing, when books had to be reproduced by hand, it was too expensive to copy books for profit. As soon as it became practical, the necessity for a copyright law became obvious and it was enacted. The law came about as the result of the advances in technology.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Because the right to be protected by the law is enshrined in all the democracies in which we are fortunate enough to live. If I cannot find out who has committed a crime, I cannot obtain the penalty from that person that the law says I am entitled to. In that situation I think personally that the right of the victim to obtain the identity of the criminal is more important than the criminal's right to anonymity.

If a speed camera takes a photograph of your car speeding, then at least here in the UK you are not allowed to refuse to tell the police who was driving the car at the time. You have, by law, to provide that information.

There are other examples of "privacy" vs ""public 'good' ", e.g. in the US the privacy of a co-worker who is HIV positive is protected above my right for a safe working environment. Such a tangled web we weave when first we make laws.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Is there really any fundamental difference between intellectual property and "physical" property? You seem to be saying that it's "OK" to pass on physical property to your heirs, but not intellectual property. Why do you make that distinction? Is intellectual property less "valued" than physical property? Is it less work to create it? I don't think it is!

If I build a house, I can pass on the ownership of that house to my children. You're saying that if, instead of building a house, I write a book, I shouldn't be allowed to pass on rights to income from the book to my children? Can you explain what the difference in the two situations is? I really can't see any!

Alright, Harry, I'll give it a go.

Physical property; i. e. "real" property; pre-exists the creative impulse. Land, raw materials, tools (assuming tools are used in the creation process, and yes, tools are used to create tools), and labor. The result is a modified real product. (In your example, a house). The product, finished, has a value (which may or may not exceed the cost of all the inputs) on the open market as a finished product, not as the value of the inputs. No input is paid for more than once, and no residuals remain if it is sold. The house can be sold over and over again, and the original builder/owner will get no additional money past the first sale because of it.

Intellectual Property is a completely different animal, and it always has been. It has never been granted perpetuity, unlike real property. The only property rights that exist for I.P. have been expressly given by governments to encourage creativity. These have always been in the form of a limited, wasting monopoly. The expectation was that the creator would therefore benefit from the monopoly, and be encouraged to create more. It was not to create a perpetual real property. In the US, our constitution explicitly denies that possibility. Why limited and wasting? Because the reversion to the public domain is a social good, to be balanced with the need for encouragement of creativity.

Is the balance currently fair? For copyright, NO! Not just NO but <BLEEP> NO!
Consider patent. At the turn of the 20th century, it was 17 year plus one renewal of 17 years. Total of 34 years, max. Copyright was the same. Why the same? Because both were creative expressions of ideas. Both were considered to be equally difficult. (An insult to the patent process, IMHO.) Now what is it? Patent has been shortened to 20 year, total. The invention world has not come to an end. Not by a long sight. The copyright world has been lengthened to life plus 70 years. A young author might publish a work at 20, live to be 90, and add 70 years to that, for a net of 140 years. 20 vs 140? That's fair?

Finally, show me any other labor that has residual payments attached? I know of none. Why is copyright labor so special?

[Nate the great]

Try this:

Physical property is property you can put your hands on. Intellectual property is the rights and privileges one has over physical property (belonging to someone else) that is denied to the owner of that physical property.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Because the right to be protected by the law is enshrined in all the democracies in which we are fortunate enough to live. If I cannot find out who has committed a crime, I cannot obtain the penalty from that person that the law says I am entitled to.

Entitled to? I do not know any laws that sya you are entitled to find out who has committed a crime or that you are entitled to some punishment.

So do you want to allow torture of people to find somebody you are entitled to have punished? Or were is the line draw for what you can do to find a person that has committed a crime?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

So do you want to allow torture of people to find somebody you are entitled to have punished? Or were is the line draw for what you can do to find a person that has committed a crime?

We already have laws which cover that scenario perfectly adequately - perhaps the law is different in Sweden? Here in the UK, if a court orders you to divulge information which the law requires you to, and you refuse, you will be prosecuted for "contempt of court". There are numerous legal situations in which the law requires you to provide information of all sorts. One simple example which I mentioned earlier - if you are caught speeding by a speed camera, you are required to say who was driving the vehicle at the time of the offence; failing to provide that information is a crime.

Do you torture people in Sweden in that kind of situation?

[nekokami]

I was going to post something about the copyright/IP issue, but what's the point?

Regarding the "anti-piracy" legislation referenced in the OP, is there currently no legal way to request this information in the UK? If you wanted to sue the person who allegedly posted the content, wouldn't you be able to get a court order for the ISP to reveal the identity of that person currently, by showing probable cause, just as you would to get a warrant to have their property searched?

The "three strikes" rule seems as prone to abuse as the DMCA, IMHO. I've seen that abused to take down web sites someone just didn't like, without providing any real evidence to support the claim.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We already have laws which cover that scenario perfectly adequately - perhaps the law is different in Sweden? Here in the UK, if a court orders you to divulge information which the law requires you to, and you refuse, you will be prosecuted for "contempt of court".

So what does that matter for your right (you have not exlained what you mean by right so I assume right in the philosophicall way as in positive right) to have somebody punished? If I am a witness and refuse to talk I can be punished but the person you want to punish will go free. So what does it mean that you have a right here?

And what does it mean with respect to what companies must do with respect to saving information or other costly things?

And saying that the laws are in a certain way is no argument for them to be this way.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Regarding the "anti-piracy" legislation referenced in the OP, is there currently no legal way to request this information in the UK? If you wanted to sue the person who allegedly posted the content, wouldn't you be able to get a court order for the ISP to reveal the identity of that person currently, by showing probable cause, just as you would to get a warrant to have their property searched?

In theory, yes. In practice, such legal action is so expensive that it's the realm of large companies and the super-rich. No small author could afford to do such a thing.

[Trenien]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That may have been the intent 200 years ago when authors were "gentlemen" who didn't have to work for a living. Clearly, times have changed, and today virtually all authors write to make money, and income from their books is their only "asset". To say that those assets cannot be handed on to their dependents seems WRONG to me.

Must... not... answer...

Originally Posted by HarryT

Is there really any fundamental difference between intellectual property and "physical" property? You seem to be saying that it's "OK" to pass on physical property to your heirs, but not intellectual property. Why do you make that distinction? Is intellectual property less "valued" than physical property? Is it less work to create it? I don't think it is!

If I build a house, I can pass on the ownership of that house to my children. You're saying that if, instead of building a house, I write a book, I shouldn't be allowed to pass on rights to income from the book to my children? Can you explain what the difference in the two situations is? I really can't see any!

Damn, couldn't resist that one.

You are only trying to stir things up, right? Right?

Because if not, you just basically stated that nothing covered by copyrights laws should ever be released in the public domain.

[Trenien]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Bloated and abusive"? Pardon me? Do you really consider it "abusive" for an author to want to get paid for sales of his books, rather than allowing them to be downloaded free of charge from BT sites?



All that's being proposed, as I understand the EU legislation, is that if a copyright holder can show that their material is being offered for download illegally, the ISP will be obliged to provide personal details of the "owner" of that IP address. If the person ignores repeated warnings, their internet access will be terminated. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me - it's no different from banning from driving someone who persistently commits driving offences.

Except, of course, that nowhere in the procedure described by the law is there anything ressembling involvement of legal justice (you know, due process).
Everything is handled through private entities.