Access to Knowledge: YEA or NAY

[Venus]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Do you view copyright laws as part of the package of fundamental human laws, or do you see them as mere spatiotemporal abstractions?

What I mean is I don't believe in copyright so your statement about violating copyright doesn't make any sense to me...

What I do believe in is being able to read whatever I want.

What's next......being able to view whatever you want?

[MikeB1972]

Hey Giggles

How come the site you propose means no one can make a living creating anything, but the site owners can make a living leaching from everyone else?

Surely under your usual "free for everyone" rules the site owner would have to pay for the site and bandwidth themselves (No advertising revenue anyway of course as, in a world where everyone can take what they want, advertising is no longer of any use.)

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Do you view copyright laws as part of the package of fundamental human laws, or do you see them as mere spatiotemporal abstractions?

Are you asking if copyright is a law of human nature? If so, my answer is probably not. However, it is the best thing that we have at the moment when you consider the needs of the author, reader, and all parties in between. In that respect, it is a good thing.

The world that you're talking about would only consider the needs of the distributor and the reader. That is a not-so-good thing.

[The Terminator]

Think about it, if you spent years writing a book and as soon as you publish it, people just start downloading your hard work for free. How would you feel? You'd probably be p***ed, and most likely you wouldn't right a book again, or in the very least you wouldn't ever want to publish an eBook.

[bill_mchale]

Copyright is not human nature, but then again, most laws are there specifically because of problems with human nature (i.e., we can be jerks some times).

Here is the long and the short of it, copyright (though obviously needing reform) is necessary to allow authors (or in the case of other types of media, artists, singers, producers, directors, etc.) to make money on what they produce. Yes, some people would produce some books, music, etc. without a financial incentive, but much of what we have now would not have been produced without copyright. Does anyone seriously think Hollywood is going to dump $30-$140 million on a movie that they can't sell tickets too? Or that an author is going to be able to write dozens (or in some cases hundreds of books) if he is unable to make a living on it?

--
Bill

[wannabee]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Greetings! It's time for a fantastically futile?? poll

If a website hosts all knowledge and gives access to everyone, but donates any profit received through the site to relevant charities (educational facilities etc...) Should the site be allowed to exist?

So it creates revenue by subscriptions or advertising I assume.

By all knowledge I mean anything that the site wishes to distribute.

Like Amazon

It would of course be hard to imagine a site hosting all knowledge.

Sort of like Google

And by profit I mean anything more than is required for the site's administrators to live nicely... I think you get what I mean.

Sort of like other big website owners.

Spoiler:

1 Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin $21,800,000,000
2 Amazon Jeff Bezos $19,166,000,000
3 Yahoo Jerry Yang and David Filo $7,200,000,000
4 eBay Pierre Omidyar $6,290,000,000
5 MSN/Live Nathan Myhrvold. $3,214,000,000
6 PayPal Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek $2,250,000,000
7 iTunes Jeff Robbin $1,900,000,000
8 Reuters Marshal Vace $1,892,000,000
9 Priceline Jesse Fink $1,884,000,000
10 Expedia Added Mark Schroeder $1,447,000,000

To me this is the only question worth considering in the coming era of widespread ereader adoption.[/QUOTE]

Spoiler:

[spellbanisher]

Ignorance is bliss.

[Giggleton]

Yes, most if not all website operators are pirates... Making ad revenue off of our copyrighted material, selling it or just copying it for others to read, i.e. this thread.

It does appear that the majority favor access to knowledge, which is good.

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Yes, most if not all website operators are pirates... Making ad revenue off of our copyrighted material, selling it or just copying it for others to read, i.e. this thread.

The author's intent is also important. When a person posts to a forum, they know that they will not receive compensation for it. When someone releases a book under certain Creative Commons licenses, they are aware that they will not receive compensation for it. When a developer creates open source software, they are aware that they will not receive compensation for it. The fact that someone else may generate revenues from it is, quite frankly, irrelevant. The people getting money in those cases isn't even a pirate (in most cases) since they have been granted permission to use those works.

The difficulty comes when a site hasn't been granted permission. And that problem exists whether they are profiting enormously from it, just covering costs, or not generating any revenues whatsoever (directly or indirectly).

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

The author's intent is also important.

The difficulty comes when a site hasn't been granted permission. And that problem exists whether they are profiting enormously from it, just covering costs, or not generating any revenues whatsoever (directly or indirectly).

Is the author's intent important?

What exactly constitutes a site? mobileread's servers?

What about thumbnail page images fetched from a google search cached through mobileread alongside ads which benefit google?

What is permission????

For most of human history texts were freely shared...

Ideas come and go... Some are put into practice for awhile, found to be useless,stupid,harmful and then discarded.

If you read a life altering text, do you not want to share that text with as many people as possible so that they might have the same experience as you? And do you not think that any block to this kind of sharing is severely detrimental to the advancement of our species culture...

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

For most of human history texts were freely shared...

No, they weren't. For most of human history, texts were locked away, few people had access to them. They were about as freely distributed as is the gold in Fort Knox. Then the printing press came along in 1440. The first copyright law was in 1710. So in the age when it was possible for people to distribute texts, we had 270 years without copyright, and 302 years with copyright.

The reason we have so many texts is that because of copyright, authors have an incentive to create. Without it, the only people writing would be those who wanted to give their work for free, basically hobbyists with other incomes.

If you want free books, you alredy have access to more books than you could ever read in a lifetime; books that have had their copyrights expire and books where the author chose not to charge for them.

I'm a supporter of the public domain, I wouldn't have extended copyright to the current terms, and oppose further expansion. But to eliminate copyright is to kill the golden goose.

If you read a life altering text, do you not want to share that text with as many people as possible so that they might have the same experience as you? And do you not think that any block to this kind of sharing is severely detrimental to the advancement of our species culture...

This life-altering text can't be shared with anyone if it is never written. If it is given away for free, it is probably never going to be written in the first place. I support copyright for a limited period because it both provides the incentive for authors to create works and ensures that they will enter the public domain at some point. Both eternal copyright and no copyright strangle culture.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

No, they weren't. For most of human history, texts were locked away, few people had access to them. They were about as freely distributed as is the gold in Fort Knox. Then the printing press came along in 1440. The first copyright law was in 1710. So in the age when it was possible for people to distribute texts, we had 270 years without copyright, and 302 years with copyright.

The reason we have so many texts is that because of copyright, authors have an incentive to create. Without it, the only people writing would be those who wanted to give their work for free, basically hobbyists with other incomes.

If you want free books, you alredy have access to more books than you could ever read in a lifetime; books that have had their copyrights expire and books where the author chose not to charge for them.

When I say texts I include the oral transmission of information. Printed texts have indeed been locked down throughout the ages, up to and including the present time (copyright).

I think the idea that without copyright the creation of texts would cease is a false one. What we would definitely obtain is the creation of a literature whose creation for monetary purposes would be somewhat lower on the list of priorities for the texts creation.

We cannot know beforehand which text is most crucial for us to read at any point in time or space, therefore it is crucial that we have unlimited access to all texts, just to be sure.

In the past this idea would have seemed insane, oral transmission of ideas required the transmitter to travel, written words required the writer to laboriously write out each text individually, the printing press allowed a limited number of copies to be made of each text, the digital allows an infinite number of people to access a text instantaneously.

The idea that we should have access to everything is no longer insane and in fact it is a quite realizable one.

If no text can be sold, it would be simple to send the monies from those that are bought directly to the creator, instead of to unaffiliated third parties, megaupload etal.

[AndrewH]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

We cannot know beforehand which text is most crucial for us to read at any point in time or space, therefore it is crucial that we have unlimited access to all texts, just to be sure.

This argument is not very convincing regarding fiction.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

When I say texts I include the oral transmission of information. Printed texts have indeed been locked down throughout the ages, up to and including the present time (copyright).

An oral text is an oxymoron. But my all means, memorize all the text you want and recite them. Copyright is not analogous to handwritten texts being locked away. Copyrighted books are available to anyone, you just have to buy them.

I think the idea that without copyright the creation of texts would cease is a false one. What we would definitely obtain is the creation of a literature whose creation for monetary purposes would be somewhat lower on the list of priorities for the texts creation.

But you already have that. There are plenty of books that the author offers for free. You don't want those books, you are demanding that the author wrote expecting to make a living from.

Without copyright, the only books written would be those where the author didn't care about making a living from the books. The books that you want would be gone. Thus, by arguing against copyright, you shout from the mountaintops about the effectiveness of copyright in bringing us the books we want.

We cannot know beforehand which text is most crucial for us to read at any point in time or space, therefore it is crucial that we have unlimited access to all texts, just to be sure.

That doesn't logically follow from anything.

In the past this idea would have seemed insane, oral transmission of ideas required the transmitter to travel, written words required the writer to laboriously write out each text individually, the printing press allowed a limited number of copies to be made of each text, the digital allows an infinite number of people to access a text instantaneously.

The idea that we should have access to everything is no longer insane and in fact it is a quite realizable one.

Yes, it is easier to copy and transmit data. That in no way implies that we should have every book for free. That is like saying that we should have free airplane tickets, because travel has become so much cheaper and faster.

If no text can be sold, it would be simple to send the monies from those that are bought directly to the creator, instead of to unaffiliated third parties, megaupload etal.

WHAT money? If text aren't sold, where does the money come from?

[elcreative]

: coffeebreak:
Repeat as needed until either unconscious or the troll is