Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
You have a natural right to make copies or use whatever idea you want. The government have introduced limitations in this right with copyright laws
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You also have a natural right to shoot someone who cuts you off on the street. However, the government has introduced limitations in this right with laws. A society needs laws to prevent people from doing what comes naturally... like stealing from others. Without those laws, society will not be able to function.
Without the protections provided by copyright laws, intelligent people will not produce much of the things you benefit from on a daily basis. You have more things available to you today, thanks to copyright laws. Therefore, copyright laws actually
enrich your life.
llasram suggested Prohibition is a good analogy for the e-book situation. I believe a better analogy is
speeding. Despite laws designed to protect society, people speed, and they always rationalize a good reason to do it ("I'm able to handle this speed"... "There's no one else on this street"... "I won't get caught"). It is the attitude of the Last Man On Earth: No one will be hurt by my actions. But in fact, with almost 7 billion people around him, there's a very good chance that he will hurt someone after all.
And when they do get caught, or worse, their speeding results in an accident or death (as many of them do), the speeder still seeks to blame someone else, or to rationalize why it wasn't his fault ( usually because "It was
that guy's fault." My personal favorite: "That guy came outta nowhere!").
Society recognizes that people speed, so it sets up guidelines to supplement the laws (for instance, allowing everyone an "extra 5MPH" before they will be stopped), in order to avoid breaking its back trying to arrest everyone, and do the most good. And for years, this has been the situation accepted on both sides (despite the fact that cars still kill more people than cigarettes).
Now, with the invention of speed cameras, potentially every single car can be documented speeding, and a fine can be mailed out to them via computer, with penalties (such as loss of license) if they do not pay. Others are talking about putting speed regulators on privately-owned cars. Suddenly, everyone is up-in-arms over an established speeding law, because they can't get away with it like they used to.
And at heart is the outright refusal to accept the fact that "speed kills," or that the law in place is not designed to inconvenience them, but to prevent someone else from being inconvenienced by a sudden and violent death.
E-book "pirates" refuse to accept the idea that an IP creator is hurt when he is not paid for his work. And in a world where someone is dependent on the income he makes from his IP, every copy not paid for is injurious to him. But the "pirate" in his selfishness doesn't care about someone he's never met, somewhere on the other side of the planet, so he does what he wants, in his rationalizations for justification, and his ultimate belief that he won't get caught.
And every so often, a creator is so hurt by the amount of pirating of his work that he stops creating... we lose their creations, and we are all worse off for it. And still, the "pirate" seeks to blame someone else ("It's the governments"... "It's that guy's high price and DRM"... "Someone else posted the pirated work...
they did wrong. I only downloaded it.").
Everyone should understand that we all live together in a society, one becoming more global every day... and that in order to keep this society working, we can no longer afford to succumb to the temptation of living by the "natural law."