[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

There is another option- that of "ordered liberty" . An Internet under the rule of law can be just as free and even more productive than a lawless Internet . Indeed, it will be necessarily more productive, as we shall see.*

The internet is currently under rule of law. We have laws against copyright infringement, against fraud and plagiarism, against bandwidth theft... and the people who want those laws expanded are, universally, those who think they're not making enough money with the current system.

Note: Not people who worked for companies that went bankrupt. Not agents complaining that their clients aren't getting paid enough for their work. Most of the ones who think the current laws aren't adequate--rather than "not adequately enforced"--are spokesmen for companies in the Fortune 500 set.

Frankly, we want to government to go after those engaged in identity theft, phishing, and the various types of fraud practiced on the Internet , not to mention distribution of child porn and trafficking in underage girls.

I want the government to go after spam, under the laws that forbid unwanted commercial faxing and sometimes laws about fraud/identity theft. (Many spammers forge headers to make themselves hard to identify.) Where is, by the way, all the hot corporate action against spam, phishing, and identity theft? Where's the million-dollar campaign to make bank fraud emails ("Your account has been compromised! Login to our server to verify your details!") a federal felony, and the related legal shifts to make it easy to track down the people doing it?

It seems the only kind of criminal offense that we do not want to enforce on the Internet is copyright enforcement .*

Copyright enforcement is not "criminal" in many cases; it's civil. A lot of us want it to remain that way. The corporations want it to be criminal so that the cost of investigation and enforcement is inflicted on the government, not their own legal departments.

People have speculated about my motives for taking my unpopular positions. Is it because I'm a corporate shill? Hardly.

FWIW, I've never thought you were a corporate shill. I sometimes think you're too prone to believing corporate press releases, but I don't think you get any specific reward for supporting their sides.

It's because I am selfish and more to the point, uncreative.*
I know that I can't write like Steven King or George RR Martin.*
I can't direct a movie like Stephen Spielberg.*
I can't produce a TV series like Game of Thrones.*
I can't write software like the mobile app developers that make my Mobile devices such a joy to use.*

Ah. See, the writers I most wish to support, are not like Steven King or George RR Martin, and legal changes that would help them, might hurt a lot of the authors I love. (I have thoughts on the others, but this is an ebook forum.)

I also know that the reason I get to enjoy the products of these creators * is because they can make money from creating and distributing these products.

This may be one of our major differences. Since I read a lot of fanfic, I'm don't connect "excellent literary skill and lots of content" with "makes money from it." I know that artists will continue to create amazing works with or without cash payment.

It won't be the *same* artists. And I don't want the must-get-paid artists to stop working, so I support them when and how I can. But I think of *commercial* art as a subcategory of "the arts I wish to consume," and therefore want commercial interests balanced against the interests of other approaches.

I don't want commercial art to be the only kind that gets legal protection, and that's one of the ways the new proposed laws fail--they seem to assume that only works with a price tag are subject to infringement. (Am I infringing your copyright by quoting your comment in mine? Would it be infringement if I copied your whole comment to my blog, and commented on it there?)

To paraphrase Mr. Smith, it's not from the benevolence of the author, the publisher or the bookseller by which I get my evenings entertainment

I get a great deal of my entertainment by the benevolence of volunteer coders and volunteer authors. I want them to have an arena where they can continue to share their efforts, and I can share mine.

Without the protection of their intellectual property rights by the law, these creators ( and the people who invest in them) won't be able to profit from their hard work

They have IP rights by law.

and over time, there will fewer and lower quality products coming into he marketplace. So far this is elementary economics.

This presumes that the number and scope of creative works is somehow limited by what kinds are commercially profitable--that reducing profitability will reduce the quality and number of available works. I don't disagree that it's possible, but I don't take it as absolute that either (1) failure to expand copyright infringement punishments will reduce profitability, nor (2) reduction of profitability would destroy "the arts" as we know them.

Unfortunately, many *people here don't see this. They think that high quality entertainment products somehow magically just appear in the marketplace in a process divorced from the making of profit.

Magically? No. But nobody becomes an artist (author, photographer, musician, actor) in order to get rich. The desire to make their art has nothing--directly--to do with the need to make money.

1) The public wants art, of many sorts.
2) The public is willing to pay for art, and has always been willing.
3) There are more artists than the public is willing/able (debatable point) to pay a living wage to.

Sorting out exactly how and to whom the limited payments are assigned, is variable by culture. The current method's pretty good... but I'm not seeing that the proposed changes in IP-related punishments improve things for artists, as opposed to "for the people who've built careers playing middleman for artists' works."

Presumably, those middlemen would pass along some of their increased profits to the artists--but since I know plenty of artists outside of their scope, I'm not convinced that's particularly useful in the long run.

They don't seem to realize that the people being *ripped off by pirates are mostly not the "" corporations" or the "publishers" but the artists and creators.*

Artists whose incomes are tied to corporate decision-making are indeed being hurt. However, I'm not encouraging more restrictive, privacy-invading laws, on the grounds that if I don't, Random House will cut off the contracts of authors I like. Or that BMI will refuse to enter recording contracts with bands I like.

I'm not going to be bullied with "give us what we want or we'll punish the artists you love."

You can't watch *a movie if it's never made because the studio wont risk investing in it because of threat of piracy.*
You can't hear a song if the songwriter doesn't write it because she won't be able to make money from it
You can't buy a book that the author won't write because its not worth it to him to spend nine months writing a book only to see it massively " shared" online by people who won't pay him a penny.*

I won't pay for a movie that's incompatible with my DVD player. (Had to remove the Area 2 restrictions to play Santa Sangre.)

I won't pay for hear a song that won't play on my MP3 player. (Off-brand; doesn't support DRM.)

I won't pay for an ebook that won't transfer between my home computer, work computer, laptop & ebook readers. I won't pay for a physical book I don't intend to want to use as a reference work for several decades.

It doesn't matter to me whether I "can't" get access to art that's not made, if the stuff that's produced is in formats I'm not interested in. I have no direct interest in supporting artists who're working in media I don't consume. I can allow that they're useful for *someone*, and I support the *concept* of that art, but I'm not putting my dollars--nor my voting support--toward art that's outside of my range. I'm certainly not willing to limit the abilities and rights of artists whose art I *do* consume in order to support art that I have no interest in.