Misleading Metaphors That Drive The War On Online Sharing

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No I'm not. As I said, it's my own photograph of my own property.

Succinct and to the point.

Now, if you'd've made a copy of an original actual photograph of a genuine BBC Dalek, taken on the Who set by a BBC employee, who had a contract as a photographer ....... you would probably have been in the Tower by now.

Without an ereader.

Or a photo of a Dalek.

But a newspaper picture of one if you confessed all.

As long as it wasn't from the News of the World ..........

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I see we have our monthly copyright law debate thread.

1) Copyright infringement is not "theft."

2) That doesn't mean it's legal or ethical; just that the proper label of the crime or tort involved is not "theft."

3) Part of the reason for "theft" not being the right label, is that "theft" means you *no longer have* whatever is stolen.

4) Another part is that theft has penalties equivalent to what was stolen + reasonable penalty fee; stealing a CD = ~hundred dollar fine; unauthorized copying of a CD = up to $150,000 fine.

5) None of this is going to convince anyone who's been involved in these arguments before; we do this to either discover new phrasings for what we already believe, or give newcomers to the debate an idea of the range of issues involved.

6) Copyright law is seriously broken, and has been since the first computers went online. There is absolutely no way for individuals to enforce copyrights of their noncommercial works. (If, for example, I wanted to say, "I do not grant permission for my posts to be copied to AOL's servers," I have no way to enforce that, even thought I didn't post on AOL's servers.)

Pretty much sums up my point of view as well.

I would like to add though, that the publishers, music and entertainment industry need to be proactive at change as well. However the only proactivity they have been involved in is increased litigation and publication of extemely biased statistics and reports.

Works both ways and currently the cave dwellers are not coming out to even attempt to resolve the issues presented to them in a digital age, even nearly twenty years on.

[ScalyFreak]

Technically copyright law is not broken, it's just severely outdated.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Ah... the age old question;
"Which came first the Etymologist or the common use of the word?"

Or, what, back in the day when I was doing graduate linguistics work, we call "etic vs. emic". Dunno if they still use that.

Does language shape our ideas or do our ideas shape our language? It made for great late night academic debates, but of course the truth is it's both/and.
Though from what I understand, in recent times variations of weak Whorfianism have gained the upper hand.

--nathanael

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

So now I know what a Dalek is. That and HarryT's avatar is not just a fancy salt shaker.

Ex-salinate! EX-SALINATE!!!

[teh603]

Originally Posted by sabredog

I would like to add though, that the publishers, music and entertainment industry need to be proactive at change as well. However the only proactivity they have been involved in is increased litigation and publication of extemely biased statistics and reports.

Works both ways and currently the cave dwellers are not coming out to even attempt to resolve the issues presented to them in a digital age, even nearly twenty years on.

Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait a long while longer for all the Neanderthals and Austrelopithicines (sp?) to filter out of the system.

Case in point, Wizards of the Coast and their canning all the legitimate sources of watermarked PDFs on the grounds that PDF piracy was cutting into their sales to much. Legitimate RPG e-book websites like DriveThruRPG are still doing a booming ebook business, even if their stuff is a bit hefty to load into my Story HD's main memory. WotC, on the other hand is plagued by managers and executives who only seem to understand Magic: the Gathering and not role- players or miniatures gamers.

It also hasn't done a thing to stop people from cutting the binding out of their books, scanning them, and posting the scans on various internet sources, which is where most of the pirated ebooks were all coming from anyway. Ending the distribution of legitimate PDFs of their books has only reduced WotC's revenue stream and shot them in the digital foot.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by teh603

Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait a long while longer for all the Neanderthals and Austrelopithicines (sp?) to filter out of the system.

Case in point, Wizards of the Coast and their canning all the legitimate sources of watermarked PDFs on the grounds that PDF piracy was cutting into their sales to much. Legitimate RPG e-book websites like DriveThruRPG are still doing a booming ebook business, even if their stuff is a bit hefty to load into my Story HD's main memory. WotC, on the other hand is plagued by managers and executives who only seem to understand Magic: the Gathering and not role- players or miniatures gamers.

It also hasn't done a thing to stop people from cutting the binding out of their books, scanning them, and posting the scans on various internet sources, which is where most of the pirated ebooks were all coming from anyway. Ending the distribution of legitimate PDFs of their books has only reduced WotC's revenue stream and shot them in the digital foot.

I have to agree with that.

My wife and I are participating in our Son in Law's D&D campaign and the expensive hardcover gaming manuals are kept aside (I have all versions except e4.0 in hardcover) and easier to handle PDF's on netbooks and iPads are used for rules lookup et al are sued during the gaming sessions.

Apparently it has been this way for several years now and keeps the hardcovers from disintegrating and becoming ruined. At around AU$60-80 per book, it certainly can be understood why they might want to do that. I purchased a paperback version of the rules for sessions on eBay but the veterans of the group indicated that those are rare as rocking horse poo.

It is a damn shame that WoG reverted to head in sand tactics in regards to PDF documents of the rule books. They could have sold those for a quarter of the hardover cost and a lot of gamers would have been happy.

Simply confirms my view that publishers (in this case) simply have no idea whatsoever how to handle supply and distibution in this modern world.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Ex-salinate! EX-SALINATE!!!

Although, given the way this thread is going, Ex-salinate would be to remove the salt and therefore the wrong word for a salt shaker

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Although, given the way this thread is going, Ex-salinate would be to remove the salt and therefore the wrong word for a salt shaker

ex-piratate! ex-piratate! ... ?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sabredog

I have to agree with that.

My wife and I are participating in our Son in Law's D&D campaign and the expensive hardcover gaming manuals are kept aside (I have all versions except e4.0 in hardcover) and easier to handle PDF's on netbooks and iPads are used for rules lookup et al are sued during the gaming sessions.

Apparently it has been this way for several years now and keeps the hardcovers from disintegrating and becoming ruined. At around AU$60-80 per book, it certainly can be understood why they might want to do that. I purchased a paperback version of the rules for sessions on eBay but the veterans of the group indicated that those are rare as rocking horse poo.

It is a damn shame that WoG reverted to head in sand tactics in regards to PDF documents of the rule books. They could have sold those for a quarter of the hardover cost and a lot of gamers would have been happy.

Simply confirms my view that publishers (in this case) simply have no idea whatsoever how to handle supply and distibution in this modern world.

I strongly suspect that it would not be economically feasible to sell eBook for a quarter the price of the printed book. Printing is a relatively small component of the price of a book; the main cost for a book such as this will be in the layout and editing, and that's there for an eBook just as much as for a hardback.

This is a company which has tried eBook sales and concluded that, for their market sector, piracy is too much of a problem. They do appear to be talking with the benefit of practical experience. One should blame the people who have pirated their books for this, not the company.

[Greg Anos]

What I find darkly cynical is the one-sidedness of the term "pirate" (or "theft", if you prefer).

Copyright is not property, it is a limited monopoly. It was granted at time of creation (in most jurisdictions). The terms were defined and ccepted by both parties at time of creation.

So when a government extends a copyright term, they are "stealing" from the public. It's every bit as much "theft" as copyright infringment.

But nobody on the pro-copyright side of the discussion can ever admit this fact, because it makes the copyight holders just a crooked as the evil "pirates".

Woe be to that possibility.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A copy of a book is a book; a photograph of a Dalek is not a Dalek. The BBC certainly have the right to license who can build Daleks, but they don't have the right to say to someone who perfectly legally owns a Dalek, "you can't take a photograph of it and use the photograph for non-commercial purposes."

A copy of a page in a book is not the book, but we still have to obey the copyright rules on the forum and from what I've seen we are not allowed to show how out devices display text from a book under copyright, even if it's just one page.

You also didn't pay attention to what murraypaul said in post #54:

Originally Posted by murraypaul

To break this thread further:
http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/ip_photography.htm

[...]
So that there is at least an argument that you have in fact (completely unknowingly) infringed on the BBC's copyright by transmitting a photograph of their copyrighted object to the public.

You don't have the right to take a photograph of the Dalek that you purchased without BBC's permission. The law isn't even slightly ambiguous about this.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I strongly suspect that it would not be economically feasible to sell eBook for a quarter the price of the printed book. Printing is a relatively small component of the price of a book; the main cost for a book such as this will be in the layout and editing, and that's there for an eBook just as much as for a hardback.

This is a company which has tried eBook sales and concluded that, for their market sector, piracy is too much of a problem. They do appear to be talking with the benefit of practical experience. One should blame the people who have pirated their books for this, not the company.

Actually, its a company that doesn't know... well, I'm not sure if this board will censor for the shoe polish metaphor I want to use. They just *really* don't understand their customers.

These are the same people who felt that a miniatures game would do better if they distributed their miniatures in opaque- packaged booster packs like Magic cards. Unfortunately, the average miniatures gamer is a bit of a control freak and insists on knowing exactly what they're getting before they buy it. It also doubly shafted the people who use the miniatures for the RPG because some extremely common non-player character types (for example, Hutt gangsters in Star Wars) were super- rare or not available at all. So WotC's miniatures games are practically dead and people are buying their miniatures from other sources like Iron Wind Metals, Reaper, and Games Workshop.

As for the possibility of the legitimate PDFs being used for piracy; the ones I saw weren't. There's no way PDFs that crappy would've come out of a professional ebook vendor.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

What I find darkly cynical is the one-sidedness of the term "pirate" (or "theft", if you prefer).

Copyright is not property, it is a limited monopoly. It was granted at time of creation (in most jurisdictions). The terms were defined and ccepted by both parties at time of creation.

So when a government extends a copyright term, they are "stealing" from the public. It's every bit as much "theft" as copyright infringment.

But nobody on the pro-copyright side of the discussion can ever admit this fact, because it makes the copyight holders just a crooked as the evil "pirates".

Woe be to that possibility.

Didn't you forget that the government has been elected by the public and thus represents the public? So the public indirectly agreed to the extension.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

You don't have the right to take a photograph of the Dalek that you purchased without BBC's permission. The law isn't even slightly ambiguous about this.

That would be like saying that you don't have the right to photograph anybody wearing clothes, anybody driving a car, any house, any item of furniture, etc, etc. All those are copyrighted designs; the list is endless. A photograph of an object is not a copy of an object; copyright law does not apply. It's different for "unique" objects like paintings, statues, etc, which is what Paul was referring to. They are unique objects where the image IS the object, if you like. Clothes, cars, furniture, (yes, and Daleks too) are not unique objects - there are lots of them, and a photograph of any one of them is not violating anyone's rights. Until or unless you can point me to a legal ruling which states that using a photograph of a mass-produced object for non-commercial purposes is a breach of copyright, this is what I will continue to believe.