Pirates and TOSEC sucks

[Belial6]

What amazes me is how many people will cry about the evil pirates, when to date, I have never met a single person that has not commited hundreds of IP violations.  Whether it's using someone elses creation as an avatar, taking a photo of your best friend holding a Coke can, or copying a movie you rented back when we had VHS, you are a "pirate".

Then there is the large group of people who would "pirate back in the old days", but since have learned the error of their ways, and come down on those who do it now like a hammer.

"Piracy" is a gray issue.  We all know that our IP laws are broken. (US and Euro alike)  When over 90% of your population refuse to obey a law, maybe it is time to re-think the law.

[Belial6]

thats not piracy...

It is if your friend is holding a Coke can that has coca cola's trademarked wave displayed.  Taking a picture of this without express written permission is an illegal copy of thier trademark, and thus "piracy".

this might come as a shock, but in my early to mid teens i was a bit of a pirate, i always had this guilty feeling, and eventually i realised i was completly wrong - i can respect others who have done wrong in their past... thats what forgivness is all agout  you have to give people a chance to change...

What you call forgiveness, others would call hypocracy.  "I got mine, now we should stop everybody else."

are you suggesting you want the law to change? i believe that if 99% of people are doing somthing wrong, it doesnt make that right - its still evil IMAO

YES, I am suggesting I want the law to change.  The idea of copying someone as being wrong is a new concept that was created with the relatively new idea of copyright.  For thousands of year, humanity, AND business functioned perfectly fine without copyright.

"Evil"  Illegal, yes.  But evil?  You must be kidding?!?!?!  Everything created is derivitive, right down to the words you used to write your response.  If copying someone is "evil" as opposed to illegal, all humanity is evil from the begining of speech onward.

Or, are you saying that it is illegal, and doing something that is illegal is "evil"?  If so, changing the law makes it not "evil" anymore.

[Belial6]

Which just shows that piracy is a gray issue.  I'm not saying that the original idea of copyright is wrong.  I am saying that the monstrosity that it has become IS wrong.

[Belial6]

Boycotting copy protected CD's (which I sure do)

Your more generous than me...I have stopped buying CDs all together since the music industry started intentionally selling defective (copy protected) CDs.  I don't want to have to deal with the hassel of trying to force a store to take back a CD, so out of fear of getting a defective (copy protected) CD, I have stopped all purchases.

[Belial6]

Belial6, learn some law... the 'coke' logo is regitered as a trade mark. why? for the very simple fact that you cant actually copyright a logo(well people try that because the cat afford to register a trademark, but does it have the same effect? not likely!) read up on copyright law, please.

You might be right, it might not be illegal to make copies of someones trademark unless it is used in trade.  So, let me give a better example.  You take a picture of your pal, and he happens to be in frount of a movie theater, or in a room with a movie poster that makes it into the shot.  The movie post DOES have a copyright.
 

i wonder if anybody else is with you on this one?

I believe most consumers do agree.  Do they (or I) believe that copyright should be completely destroyed?  Some probably do, but most would be happy if it could be returned to a workable form.  Obviously many on this board think it needs to be changed.

Here you are twisting the meaning of what i have written. YOU KNOW that i am not talking about 'derivation'! you have delibratly chosen to change the subject from copying the actual works of a person to basing work on anothers 'ideas', ideas cannot be copyrighed!

Definition of idea
All copyright does is protect 'ideas'.  That is the whole point.  Hence the 'Intellectual' part of 'Intellectual Property'.  And with the 'derivative' rant, are you saying that the crackers who change the code on the game before distributing it are ok?  I'm doubting that.  Copyright is supposed to protect against both exact copies, AND derivative works.

the idea of Interlectual Property is ancient... However, how new or old it is is completly irrelevant. how is a new legislation nessarilly more 'wrong' than an old one?

What makes it relevent is that right and wrong are human constructs.  There is a very large contingent of the population who believe that outlawing the use of human knowledge and culture, sometimes to the point that the culture is lost, is evil.

Also, can you point me to a IP reference that would support the statement of IP being ancient?  You are the first person I have run across that made that statement.

Well apparently not. The whole reason copyright exists is that authors would write a book, take it to a publisher, who would publish it and pay the author for his work, and then a whole bunch of other *SCUM* publisher's would completly rip-off both of them... is that fair? is that the way you would like it to work again? ripping-off authours and their chosen publishers work, soley for your own selfish gain?

Well, since everybody constantly uses ideas that others came up with on a daily bases, it becomes a gray issue.    What ideas are ok to use, and which are not are pretty much constucts of the copyright law itself.  Do we call children who sing Ring Around the Rosies "evil" because they didn't get the authors permision?  What about a partent that tells their child the story of Jack and the Beanstalk?

the language is not copyrighted, it is specifically public domain.

You seem to be working off of the premise that copying someone is evil because it is illegal, and thus should be illegal because it is evil.  It's a circular argument.

I take all of the 'your a big dummy' jabs as attempts to prove me wrong without facts.  It is a common tactic in such situations, when logic fails on the subject.  And perhaps the points on everyone committing copyright violations hits a little to close to home.

[Belial6]

iamaboringperson:  Again, saying that I'm a bid dummy doesn't prove your right.  Nothing you said actually refutes my statements, and in several places you did exactly what you were accusing me of.   Is the discussion really worth physical threats?  If you would like to take any point in my statement that you think is wrong, and state your opposition to it, I'd be happy to discuss it, but so far it has been, I make a statement and you call me a big dummy.  That is not very convincing.

By the way, for all of those that are absolutists about copyright out there, it recently came to my attention that "Happy Birthday to you" is still under copyright, so before you start singing it to your loved ones, you might want to make sure that your not in violation.  :-o

Happy Birthday, We'll Sue

[Belial6]

I don't know what country you are in, but the site pointed to (which was only functioning with a few pages) only Applies to Australia, which has far more liberal copyright laws than other parts of the world.  Perticularly the U.S..

As for singing a copyrighted song.  At least in the U.S., it is illegal to perform a copyrighted song in public.  So, if you sing 'Happy Birthday to you' to your brother in your house, where only family members and a few close friends can hear, you are probably legal.  If you go to a restaurant, and start belting out the song, you are making a public performance of a copyrighted song, and in violation of the copyright.

You obviously don't disagree with everything I said, as you state that you are not against old abandoned games being put on the net.  That implies that you at least entertaine the idea that copyright is broken, and needs to be fixed.

The Australia/U.S. point, brings out a very good reason why saying copyright violation is "evil", is not reasonable.  Perticularly when it is followed up with the statement that it is not evil because it is illegal, but that it is evil irrelevent to the law.

The reason this isn't reasonable is because copyright is by definition 'the law'.  It is a construct our our legal systems.  The definition changes as you cross borders.

Two thing to keep in mind... 1) I never said that copyright should go away.  Just that it should be fixed to a more rational set of rules.  2) While our (U.S.) copyright laws are more restrictive than most places in the world.  The money behind the legislation to harden copyright laws, usually starts in our legal system, and when it has taken our rights away, it moves to other countries to take theirs.