How You’re Breaking the Law Every Day

[les]

                  

           How You’re Breaking the Law Every Day (and What You Can Do About It)

You share music, rip DVDs, make Hitler whine about your first world problems, and much more in the course of your regular online activities—and more often than not, you do these things without giving a thought to the fact that you're actually breaking the law. Here's a look at how you're inevitably circumventing copyright law and what you can do to protect yourself.

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[Nes]

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_s ... ivity.html

It is technology that has made them different,
and as we see what this technology can do we need
to recognize you can't kill the instinct the
technology produces; we can only criminalize it.

We can't stop our kids from using it;
we can only drive it underground.

We can't make our kids passive again;
we can only make them "pirates."

And is that good? We live in this weird time, it's kind
of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our
life, we live life constantly against the law.

Ordinary people live life against the law, and
that's what I -- we -- are doing to our kids.

They live life knowing they live it against the
law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive,
extraordinarily corrupting.

And in a democracy we ought to be able to do better.

[SexualChoc]

wait you stole my idea!
no you stole mine!

Does mean that Sancrit people
can sue everyone foe writing anything?

wait how about my pet peeve,
Native Americans sue for all the land "stolen" by everyone else...

OR a million other ridiculousness ideas..

[Ohmega]

wait how about my pet peeve,
Native Americans sue for all the land "stolen" by everyone else...
OR a million other ridiculousness ideas..

Because it's not like that actually happened or anything...

[isaccs77]

Does mean that Sancrit people
can sue everyone foe writing anything?

--No. There are no "Sancrit people".

wait how about my pet peeve,
Native Americans sue for all the land "stolen" by everyone else...

--In the US, and several other countries, native populations have (and still do) sued for better treatment, reparations, apologies, just compensation, etc. Your trivialization of the word "stolen" is unfortunate, as that is exactly what happened: white men offered "contracts", in english, that they disregarded over, and over, and over, and over again...ultimately driving natives on to reservations. Unfortunately, the only system natives in most countries can use to address these types of events are the same systems that took their property/freedom/etc in the first place. Ignorantly believing the lands were anything but "stolen" is to be cast in the same lot as those don't recognize that the victors write the history books.

--To your point...theft of intellectual property is a frustrating issue worldwide. Of course, trying to balance it with "fair use" and "common knowledge" is very difficult. To imply that people/institutions who attempt to collect for what they created are somehow on the wrong side of this argument seems (in a Texas drawl) un-American, or, more generally, anti-Capitalist.

Clearly, images, videos, and words created by others and used here/elsewhere generally run afowl of copyright law. Should we have to pay for their use? I say, "Yes." Am I going to pay for it? Not until someone forces me to.

[Razen]

For the record, I support copyright laws in general. You cannot copyright ideas, so this notion that somehow the government is trying to prevent the share of ideas is incorrect.

However, if we are going to discuss laws, we have to discuss what "illegal" means. There are laws, and then there are LAWS. Violating the latter puts you behind bars. Violating the former, gets you a slap on the wrist. I support laws against copyright violations that do not include criminal prosecution except in extreme circumstances. For example, if you stole my book, published it, and made a lot of money off of it...I believe that money is rightfully mine and should be returned to me.

This self-justification by thieves annoys the hell out of me. You can't steal wheat and claim it is in the public domain because it is grown on land, which we all share. The reason? Because of the work that had to go into cultivating it. I know, personally, that there is a LOT of intensive work that goes into producing music. So stealing it, is just that... benefiting on the back of someone else's labor.

Like in all areas of life, there is no black and white. The teenager who downloads a few songs for their personal enjoyment, pretty harmless. The Chinese corporation that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars of pirated U.S. material, very harmful. Let's stop taking a closed view on this issue and open it up to reasonable debate. We need to stop real pirates.

[lightinthedark]

I'm pretty sure musicians made a living before there were recordings of their work to sell. Some by performing, some by having a sponsor, etc.
People should be able to make a living off of their work without someone stealing it, as in your book-writing / publishing example, but the idea that a business model based on selling recordings (which has only been possible for about 100 years) is the only way, and is somehow an inalienable right of the music / film industry seems frankly absurd. I'm not sure what the "right" answer is, but I'm pretty sure that attempting to impose artificial scarcity on an abundant resource (digital copies of recordings) and 100+ year copyright terms is not it.
Also, as always in this debate : a handy guide . Please keep terms clear.

I must say that I agree with Nes's quoted point. For me the most concerning thing about copyright infringement is that it's so easy and commonplace and severely shouted that "THIS IS A CRIME!!!" everywhere that we're teaching a whole generation that the law only matters if you're really going to extremes or if you get caught, not that it's a valuable institution that makes society possible.

[SexualChoc]

okay maybe you don't know
I am a published author
I do appreciate Intelligence rights ideas


the idea is that all ideas are old ones really
I mean the idea of the alphabet and writing itself
http://www.hvk.org/articles/0203/35.html
on the Sanskrit people
was my way of poining out that even in ancient times tally sheets existed

or egyptian writings had poems

Heck hebrew scripture has poetic words put to music

so is any idea really original?
yes on one hand.
and No on the other
each and every idea we have usually has something we have built on, something we borrowed
should your parents sue you for teaching you how to speak when you say something they don't like?

It is an absurd idea
but the question then becomes what is Uniquely my.. Music,thought, art...
or whatever and how much was formed by the fact I used a guitar.. or paint brush.

[Nezhul]

A law that's broken by 99% of society shouldn't exist. It prooves that this law is wrong, to start with.
THe right-holders of those music we share break the same law daily by sharing other music and stuff too. Only at the same time they shout "Pay me for MY creation".
Anyway, this debate will not get you anywhere. Nor it will achieve anything. I guess every smart man knows that torrents and tubes and filehosts are not that legal. Hell, we'll use them anyway. And when they are shut down, the mankind will migrate in the encrypted networks like in Japan.
The attitude to download things won't ever be stopped before we develop mind-controlling pills which you eat dayly and live happy life. It's the law that should be changed. I think the best way to solve the problem is let every rightholder have a donation lot where I can pay money if I liked the creation.

[Yanker]

Phew. I nearly spilled my beer and drove through a red light as I was reading this on my phone.

Thanks for the warning, Les. I'll be careful in future.

[janmb]

It warms my heart to observe the fact that in my country, most of the examples of law violations in that article is in fact not illegal - quite the contrary, my right to share legally purchased material with family and friends is protected by national law - which also takes precedence over international agreements and obviously other countries' laws, including those of the copyrighted material's owner.

So no - I am in fact not breaking copyright laws most of the time - unless I deliberately try to