So we've been talking about this for a while and I'd like to go over everyones thoughts on this. Are copyright laws doing their job? Taking Andrew's analogy on PirateBay being exactly like a library, why is one ok whilst the other isnt? And my question to this is, if we took copyright laws away and let everyone pay what they wanted to the content producer, would the majority of people pay, or just consume the content for free? I don't think so. I think that most people wouldn't pay...thoughts?

Do most people who consume content now pay the content producer with the current copyright laws in place?

Libraries and The Pirate Bay are not exactly the same. In the library scenario it's a zero sum game. I can't (practically speaking) consume my copy of Moby Dick, which I checked out from library, at the same time as others. I have to forfeit my right to consume the copy in order to allow others to consume that same copy. In the case of The Pirate Bay, the factor of consumption is exponential because I do not have to forfeit my right to consume in order to enable others to.

The negative side to this is that it devalues the commodity outside the control of the producer. If supply becomes virtually infinite (through copying), value quickly diminishes. The the question is who should control that? Law? Markets? Producers? Some combination?

As long as value is diminished then of course people are going to feel less guilty for pirating copies. It becomes taking pennies out of the penny tray. But if there was a 20 dollar bill in the tray wouldn't you feel more guilty taking it? But suppressing piracy via copyright is not the answer either. Because suppression does not diminished demand or efficiently increase value. Only competing for value by creating a *better* choice will. And there are plenty of ways for competing for value than reducing price. Experience, ease, integration and availability is where the many markets are currently failing, which is why I believe people are resulting to piracy in the first place. Compete for that and I will gladly hand over my pennies.

I think that experience or ease of use arent really the factors that hinder or encourage paying versus pirating. For example back home, there are cases in which people pirate Mac apps, that you can get on the dev's website, using PayPal to facilitate the payment. They aren't hindered by the market in any way yet choose to pirate. I think that some people fall into the category of - Let me pay what I want and I will give you money because I see value in the product, but most people given the chance will pirate despite getting clear value out of it.

Given the chance of paid versus free the majority will decline payment. I think this is especially true online, where you don't have some sort of emotional incentive to pay because you are disconnected from the producer. Given the example of pay what you want coffee shops, people pay 9 times out of 10 because of social stigma of not paying in front of everyone else, because you can see someone in front of you working to give you what you want, and because they think they might get different treatment the next time around for not forking over some cash..

I don't think experience or ease will persuade everyone to pay. I didn't mean to suggest that it was a full-proof solution. It's a game of odds. So if you're a producer and you want to increase your odds of being compensated for your product it's in your best interest to make your product more conveniently available than a a competitor like The Pirate Bay can.

Should everyone pay?

Theoretically, yes. But the policy for how one deals with those who don't pay should be about maximizing the odds that people will *choose* to pay for your product. Rather than using means of suppression to force people into the making "preferred choice" by threatening with some legal action.

Current copyright law doesn't and cannot stop people from pirating.

Current copyright law doesn't and cannot force everyone who consumes to pay for content.

Without the copyright laws I see no difference in people's behaviour. People will still make bootleg copies, people will loan their books, DVDs as they do now.

If someone plays a Disney DVD in a dentist waiting room, it's a public performance, so they have to get a licence, which is to say the dentist who's advertising the film, is being penalised for encouraging kids to natter their parents to buy a DVD.

The act of consumption the processing of photons and vibrations of air particles cannot be enforced. It's not bodies property. Value added is a subjective thing, and I don't think producers want to force people by the threat of force to pay for something that the consumer doesn't see value in.

An MP3 is like someone playing a song on a loud speaker, it's the freemium model, the people who pay for the content to be produced, the paying consumers pay for the people who obtain copies and counterfeits.

It's an advertising channel, as a content producer you're recognise you're creating a name for yourself, a reputation that you will be able to up sell to the loyal followers, often up selling for an ever increasing price tag.

It seams the traditional "publishers" are trying to hold on to their power and control, trying to justify their existence rather than adding the convenience that paying customers want.

I don't think copyright law was ever intended to prevent the means of consumption. It was designed to protect the means of production. Making copies is a function of production, not consumption. Copyright laws that prohibit me from playing a movie on my TV versus my computer or DRM'd files that limit which devices or software can do playback I don't think is in the spirit of what copyright was intended for.

The problem seems to lie in how people define "production" when it comes to entertainment materials like movies or music. Is the product the result of playback (song) or ability of playback itself (mp3)? What should we protecting if anything at all? I would side with the latter definition.

If someone takes and "original" and convert's it to another medium, or a "remix" or what have you, that is an action of production.

Converting or copying for personal use I don't see a problem with. It's when that copy is distributed to others that it becomes a problem. Because unlike with a library item, it's not a zero sum game. Remixing songs is a rather subjective matter because there isn't a definitive line between plagiarism and inspiration. But if I spend 10 years writing my magnum opus and upon release you copy and paste it and slap your name on it and call it yours there it becomes a reasonable concern. On one hand it increases production which is good, but it diminishes the incentive to create in the first place if its value is not protected from plagiarism.

The only way you could prevent such behaviour is having a (or even several competing repositories) that stores a copy of your work, as you progress through your work, like a github type thing, it shows your commits, maybe not the contents but some metric and snippet...once you publish your work, that you want to sell in a book, you can say "Registered Work Flow on BookWriterHub 2012" or whatever

This adds value to a book and consumers can see the work your put in to the "work".

That's interesting that you brought up that example. I had thought of a similar idea for providing proof of origination. The problem is that the commit history could be plagiarized as well. But that's probably a good reason for needing a distrusted model where it would need to be plagiarized in all cloned repositories for it to work which would make it much harder to pull off.

My ultimate conclusion on any copyright/patent law is that it should at least just be reduced down to a 1 year protection on production. Playing the cat and mouse game of exceptions here and there floods our society with too much legal ambiguity. It just makes weasels out of everyone which undermines its original intent.

Distributed model* us what I meant to say. Damn you autocorrect!

is* what I meant to say. Gahhh!

I came upon this book last week on the future of copyright law which I thought you might find interesting. mercatus.org

Any amount of time is arbitrary, and you'll get lobbies wanting to meddle.

I think letting the market decide, the people, or what have you. Maybe there are better ideas that resonate with people in terms of proving origination if origination is the thing that adds value.

Take the TangiBot for an example: kickstarter.com

This was a makerbot "clone". A MakerBot is an open source 3D printer. This guy wanted to produce and "affordable" clone, but didn't get funding. Whilst legally he could do it but socially people found it questionable.

There are too many variables for legislation to deal with, especially in a technological era. Technology adapts and grows faster than any government.

Legislation cannot and doesn't work. It's a social thing, it's about people wanting authenticity for the things they want. Instead of tax dollars spent on enforcing the copyright lobbies whims, give it back to consumers so that they have more money to spend on entertainment, hobbies or whatever in whatever form they take.

Would you apply the same logic to trademarks? How would you know which iPhone is the real iPhone if anyone could call their product the iPhone? Especially when the trademark is a symbol. If my trademark is identical the other Apple how is the consumer to know which is the authentic one? Authenticity is a difficult matter to determine when there are no constraints to work within whether its the name on the product or the product itself.

The only people I hear about getting confused, even when buying clearly different products, are people buying gifts for people. But people who really know what they really want know what their paying for. Consumers generally research their purchase. Technology has helped them in this regard.

I think ounce the content producer has put his product in the market place is where his protection ends.

I think the consumer, the one purchasing a goods is the person who is loosing out if they are purchasing an inferior copy, if they think it's genuine. But this is not anything about copyright, this has become fraud, the personal property, the consumer's capital, has been stolen from the consumer by the conman.

You might be right. It's a tough issue because it starts to enter the positive rights arena which I tend to reject. I guess where my concern persists is whether or not complete production anarchy has a greater negative effect by dis incentivizing production in the first place if it is not protected in any way. It's like asking if there were no traffic laws would as many people use the roads? If time windows on copyrights are arbitrary and therefore pointless, would you deem speed limits the same?

Yes.

Touché

Are copyright laws doing their job?

No, but they this question assumes that their job is an important or valid one, and I question that.

No, I don't think we're assuming that the job is either important or valid. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on why you question that though, given that, as Andrew mentioned earlier, you give away your music for free and all.

Taking Andrew's analogy on PirateBay being exactly like a library, why is one ok whilst the other isnt?

This is complicated, but it assumes that the old way of creating, distributing, and selling art and information is still the right way to proceed. These industries (publishing, music, film, etc.) are clinging to their old models because they worked for so long. People are changing, the Internet continues to evolve, new generations grow up with a different idea of what "owning" something means and what art is worth, and our whole relationship with these industries are evolving. Copyright laws and industry practices do their best to stifle that natural process.

And my question to this is, if we took copyright laws away and let everyone pay what they wanted to the content producer, would the majority of people pay, or just consume the content for free?

Copyright, ownership of a work, can exist in a way that benefits both creators and consumers alike, so they don't necessarily need to just vanish. People will always take something for free, but only if it is also more convenient to do so than the paid method. Any movie you want is online somewhere, but millions of people would rather pay Netflix $10 a month than deal with the hassle of torrents. They effectively compete with free. So does Spotify and Steam.

I don't think of myself as giving my music away, I think of it as sharing it with anyone who'd like to hear it, and I believe there's a big difference between the two. We've been taught that an mp3 file, something that takes up hard disk space in our computer or some cloud account, is somehow different from streaming something. But we have phones in our pockets that are connected to the Internet nonstop. What's the difference, to the end user, between listening to an mp3 file that is on their phone's hard drive and streaming a song from YouTube? The song is the same to their ears either way. So I don't care if someone takes an actual file that contains a recording of my music instead of streaming that same recording via SoundCloud.

They deserve that option for even taking a few moments to listen to my music instead of the millions of other things they could be doing, watching, playing, or listening to.

We spent decades recording television shows and movies onto VHS tape and watching them later. It's legal, it's called time-shifting. As long as you're not selling those copies, it's fine. I don't see the difference between a VHS recording of Die Hard from HBO and an mp3 of a song ripped from YouTube.

All I'm doing is making it easier for my audience to access my music in a way that is convenient for them. Forcing everyone to experience my art in the same way does no one any favors.

FAR more people purchase my music through iTunes or other digital retailers than you'd probably assume. And these are usually people who are well aware it's out there for free. At the end of the day, there are people who want to express their appreciation for and love of the music with their hard-earned money. And there are still others who just find the iTunes ecosystem convenient for them. They don't mind paying for music when it downloads instantly to their phone. Again, it's giving people that choice.

But I would also rather more people listen to, and create new things with, my music than make every person that listens have to pay for "the privilege." There are plenty of $ opportunities elsewhere down the licensing stream.