Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Do you not think that laws (many laws, any way) are simply a legal codification of moral principles? Most people obey the law because they believe it's "right" to do so, I suspect, not because they fear the punishment if they are caught breaking it.
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Of course, the problem is that when laws are written that do not reflect what the majority of people consider moral principles, they are routinely ignored. Look at how many people speed. Most people don't obey the speed limit, but rather drive at a speed that they feel is reasonably safe.
One of the major unintentional side effects to the current copyright laws is that many people do not consider them fair. Copyright is a compromise between giving people access to various artistic works, such as books and movies, with making sure that the artist is compensated in order to encourage more works in the future. Copyright laws have been tilted so far in the favor of compensating artists (or the corporations that buy the rights to those works) that the compromise has been lost.
I would say that most people don't think that it's wrong to want to listen to music that you have purchased on any device that you may have, but the music industry would much rather force you to buy a copy for each device. The same for movies and books.
The issue that is going to really zap content providers is that the main thing that prevents real rampant piracy, the stuff that goes on in China and Africa rather than the trickle that the media companies are currently point at in the US and Europe, is the general moral consensus that it's the wrong thing to do. That moral consensus is starting to fade in the younger generation and if that spreads, then the media companies will reap the whirlwind.
If that happens, we will still have the arts, after all, copyright is a very recent invention (around 200+ years with rigid enforcement only over the last 40 years or so) and the arts have been around for thousands of years. The artists will simply have a different model for getting compensated. On the other hand, if the media companies start trusting their customers a bit and make it easy to purchase and use content in a manner that the customer wants to use the content be it ebooks, movies or music, then they can continue to make money and everyone will be happy.