A Question on ethics

[Cpt. Tim]

while a thing usually broken, speed limits are laws put in place for safety.

Until recently in america in many states sodomy was illegal. Some states definition extened sodomy to any sex that wasn't textbook intercourse (no oral, and i believe in some areas, it had to be missionary.) These weren't just those old kooky laws still on the books. It had to go to the supreme court.

In many of those states sex toys are illegal.

I think laws are a good thing. But as with these laws, sometimes you just have to make a personal moral judgement in a matter... and then hope you don't get caught.

[HarryT]

They certainly work extremely well in stopping people speeding, and you can't "escape" them. Although some people moan about them, they are no "threat" to those who obey the law and have had a huge impact on road safety here in the UK, where we have thousands of them.

[volwrath]

Originally Posted by Cpt. Tim

In many of those states sex toys are illegal.

Someof those sex toys SHOULD be illegal. I'd freak if I saw my wife coming at me with SOME of those toys

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by aleks

If I were an author and someone was stealing my book profits by posting ebooks then it would sure sour me on the idea of publishing in the electronic arena.

But what if you were an author, and some of your older books had been allowed to go out of print by your publisher, and these books started getting passed around the darknet, and sales of your current works went up as a result?

It's been said before and I agree: obscurity is a bigger threat to most authors than piracy.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by pruss

Once laws are chosen, if the laws are not immoral or clearly unreasonable, we the subjects of these laws need to obey (or leave their jurisdiction).

Or lobby against them if we do feel that they are unreasonable... and it would help if a large group of us had some kind of consensus on what would be better. That's why I participate in these discussions.

I personally feel that author's life + 75 years for copyright protection is highly unreasonable. With the ease of publishing digital content these days, I think it's quite unreasonable that publishers should be allowed to let content go out of print for longer than, say, a year but then object to others making it available. And I think it's extremely unreasonable that long-tail content like books be permitted to be sold in proprietary, locked systems when we have no example of technology lasting longer than a couple of years.

After reading comments by many professional authors and doing my humble best to think through the issues, here's what I would suggest instead:

- Copyright lasts for publication + 30 years. "Moral rights" (i.e. rights involving how characters may be used, or derivative works, etc.) last until the author's death.

- Any work that falls "out of print" via commercial distribution for a span of greater than 12 months should lapse to the author, then, after another 12 months, to the public domain if still out of print.

- No proprietary format may restrict access to a work for longer than that format has been in commercial use, plus 1 year (just to give them a head start). So Sony can restrict access to Connect content for 1 year, but after that it has to be able to automatically unlock itself. Once they've been in business supporting their format for a few years, they can lengthen that span.

- Unencrypted copies of every work "published" should be filed with an agency the equivalent of the Library of Congress for use in the case of works falling out of print.

I think this would do plenty to protect the rights of authors, publishers, and everyone else with a reasonable stake in the publishing industry, while also protecting the public interest in maintaining the availability of works and the private interest in ensuring continuing access to content purchased. But I doubt Disney and LucasFilms, among others, would calmly stand by and allow such laws to be implemented.

[Cpt. Tim]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Or lobby against them if we do feel that they are unreasonable...

Good luck. I know i couldn't give up my free time to go lobby for this stuff. And even if the community rallied and scraped together a salary to buy our own lobbyist, that moneys paying for the lobbyist, not sitting in some congressmans wallet, which is where it eventually needs to find itself.

No. we just don't have the finanical clout to make a difference, and its not like this is a emotional hotbutton issue you can rally the common populace behind.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Cpt. Tim

I

Especially in an age where digital rights and digital copyright are going to be written by lawmakers under the influence of whatever industry lobbyist pays them the most.

Here! Here!

[bingle]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I don't know about your apple replicator (it seems to me that the energy to produce the mass has to come from somewhere, so you're probably being charged for it, either that or everyone produces food this way already, and something other than material scarcity is driving the economy).

Well, right. But it's a thought experiment - a little scenario meant to isolate the philosophical principles behind people's stances. Like the "Ring of Gyges". We've thought about Intellectual property as a special entity for so long, it might be worth considering the same scenario with 'conventional' property. Is it stealing to deprive the apple merchant of a sale he might otherwise have made?

Originally Posted by nekokami

But I'm pretty sure there were criminal penalties in the US for distributing copyrighted material before 1997, whether for profit, for free, online, by sneakernet, or encrypted on stone tablets. The NET Act may have made this more explicit, but it really just reiterated existing copyright law, didn't it?

No, the courts decided that there was no explicit law allowing for punishment of non-commercial copyright infringement, and suggested that Congress might want to change that... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act).

Prior to the Internet, it was difficult and expensive for copyright works to be duplicated and distributed, so people generally didn't do it for free, only for profit. So Congress apparently overlooked it while drafting the copyright laws. (Or there are other interpretations for its absence...)

[bingle]

Originally Posted by rwsimon

Not sure this example works. The fruit stand owner only has rights to his apples, not to all apples. Now if the spandex dude started chunking out Apple iPods, then that fruit stand owner Steve Jobs would be quite justified in his shouting...

Would he? Why is the situation different? It depends on the "evil"* in the action. If the spandex man gives something away for free to another, why is that act evil? (This isn't a rhetorical question, I really want an answer...) Phrasing the question in that way sort of highlights the issues here: on the face of it, it's *not* an evil act.

Is it evil because the fruit stand owner has been deprived of a sale? Or is there another reason?

*I'm using evil as a clear term for "morally undesirable"

[nekokami]

In this example, the replicator is what's known as a "disruptive technology," ne? If everyone can have one, the economy will go through turmoil to adjust. If only Spandex-Future-Man has one, then he might want to think about how he's going to share the wealth (assuming he can replicate things like apples essentially for free). Perhaps he should also replicate something else the apple guy can sell instead, to make up for the lost income. But if he decides to replicate the replicator, see above about collapsing economies. (Never mind the potential time travel paradox-- you can make him Spandex Man from Another Planet if you like.)

Yes, I think when someone chooses to mess with a local economy they take on a certain responsibility for their actions. Feed the people free apples, and the apple guy's kids starve. But I still don't think the case is parallel to that of ebooks, for this reason: ebooks involve a creative effort. If you duplicate them, you don't get a new ebook, you get the same ebook again. If I get a duplicated apple every day, even though all the apples are the same, I won't be as hungry as before (even though I may get sick of apples). The market value of apples in general will change, but they will still have a value of sorts, because they still have nutritive value. If I get the same ebook duplicated for me every day, I think its value (to me) will drop more quickly than that of the apple, but the market value of new ebooks does not change-- they are still valuable.

Perhaps rapid duplication will reward those who are able to produce new content quickly enough to stay ahead of the reproduction curve. But I think something like embedded advertising is more likely to be a factor. Rather than Mogui having to pay every time he reads a page, some advertiser should have to pay every time Mogui reads a page with their ad on it. (And as with the apples and ebooks that people get tired of after a while, it would be a good idea to have a way to rotate the ads so people have a chance of noticing them.)

Note: I'm not saying I wish my books had ads in them. I'm just noting that this is the most likely prospect I can think of for compensating authors, publishers et al in a world of essentially free digital replication of written content.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Perhaps rapid duplication will reward those who are able to produce new content quickly enough to stay ahead of the reproduction curve. But I think something like embedded advertising is more likely to be a factor. Rather than Mogui having to pay every time he reads a page, some advertiser should have to pay every time Mogui reads a page with their ad on it. (And as with the apples and ebooks that people get tired of after a while, it would be a good idea to have a way to rotate the ads so people have a chance of noticing them.)

Note: I'm not saying I wish my books had ads in them. I'm just noting that this is the most likely prospect I can think of for compensating authors, publishers et al in a world of essentially free digital replication of written content.

Wow! This could work. I wouldn't mind some ads. Note: Concept officially added to the DRMp2p idea. The author could choose whether to take on a sponsor for his eBooks and how much that would affect the cost of reading. I envision a standard cost of reading, but authors might quarrel with that. If the author could set the rate maybe he could play with supply/demand issues. The rate could be set within his account on the DRMp2p server on a book-by-book basis. If he added a sponsor, he could reduce or eliminate the royalty fee.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by nekokami

In this example, the replicator is what's known as a "disruptive technology," ne? If everyone can have one, the economy will go through turmoil to adjust.

I read a book a few years ago that you might be interested by, nekokami, it's actually not very well written (it's an early effort by the author that's been published since he got a following), but the concept was extremely intriguing to me (and it's most definitely not mil-Sci-Fi, which I know you don't enjoy).

Basically, a dying human race sends a ship to a nearby star's habitable planet with a cargo of genetic material and robots whose job it was to set up the civilization and create a new set of humans from the cargo and raise them.

About 2~3 generations later (I can't remember specifically), a "live" set of humans follow from Earth to the new world, to discover that the 'new' humans have developed a society that's completely unconcerned with material things ('cause the Robots build everything anyone needs) and they've developed a value system all their own based on what their individual competencies and societal contributions.

The execution is rough, the writing is a bit rough, but the I found the concept is as intriguing as all get out.

Oh, yeah, the book: Voyage From Yesteryear, by James P. Hogan.

[mogui]

Thanks for the book tip. I enjoy Hogan.

Reminds me of a book I read long ago, title obscured by the mists of time, where the inhabitants (nonhuman I think) had an economy of "obs" (obligations). They would do something for you very freely and generously and thereby accumulate "obs", a system of credit. It was very interesting how beings in this economy resisted having anything done for them and made every effort to do for others.

Anyone remember the book?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by mogui

Thanks for the book tip. I enjoy Hogan.

Reminds me of a book I read long ago, title obscured by the mists of time, where the inhabitants (nonhuman I think) had an economy of "obs" (obligations). They would do something for you very freely and generously and thereby accumulate "obs", a system of credit. It was very interesting how beings in this economy resisted having anything done for them and made every effort to do for others.

Anyone remember the book?

I am thinking it is a short story with human inhabitants. Do "Anti-Gand" and "MYOB" ring a bell? I don't know where I saw it.

[mogui]

"myob" was part of it.