Quote:
Originally Posted by llreader
To continue: The problem with copyright and violations thereof is that they are not subject to an absolute morality. Copyright (like most morality, but let's not get sidetracked) is a social contract entered into by several parties with fairly clear goals and responsibilities apportioned to the various actors. The government seeks to increase creative works, and thus sets aside a protected period for intellectual property, and legally defends this new right. The public accepts the loss of what was once their right to take ideas freely from the public domain in exchange for two things: 1) an overall growth in intellectual property brought about by the legal rights of these new intellectual property owners to exploit said property and 2) the knowledge that their property will be returned to them in a reasonable period of time (initially 14-28 years). This is a great system, because not only does it do what was intended, it automatically apportions value to intellectual property that market activity deems as having social value, rather than some sort of centralized distribution of support for creative thinkers (which also exists).
The problem is that one of the parties, the intellectual property owners (who increasingly are not the creative thinkers) have decided that they do not want to uphold their end of the agreement and have used the immense wealth created by intellectual property in recent decades to influence public policy, essentially violating this social contract. There was a deal. It has been broken.
I know people are going to pirate my book. It makes me sad, but I understand it completely. In the absence of justice, people take the law into their own hands. I understand that this is larger than me or my personal stake in this.
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I don't disagree with any of that (except that there is no such thing as absolute morality) and in fact agree you are right with regard to copyright law and it's abuse. If I could, I'd snap my fingers and all corporations would disappear.
I think the authors/creators should be receiving a much bigger reward for their part (upon which entire industries are based) and I think the opportunity for that is at hand with the internet. Yes there will always be thieves and criminals that prey on society but the current attitude of copying IP and claiming it harms no one is totally bogus, that is what will destroy society. The ethics and morals it exhibits are what will destroy us. That attitude of taking regardless of the consequences. It may be music today, ebooks tomorrow ...
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.
--Pastor Martin Niemöller