The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.

        • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          You seem to not understand what the word own means and the difference between material and not material goods.

            • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              13
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              I have a thing and than someone takes it away, so I can’t use it anymore. If somebody copies that thing - it’s not really theft.

              My point is more - concepts from physical world don’t nessessary apply to digital world.

              • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                It just seems that what you are saying is that people shouldn’t be paid if their work doesn’t create something physical.

                • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Nope, that’s not what I’m saying. I just make a difference between copying, stealing, physical goods, digital goods and immaterial things. They are not the same.

                  Easy examples: original and copy does not really apply to digital works or two people on opposite sides of world can have the same thought but not have the same physical object at the same time, etc.

                  • Katana314@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Please name for me something someone could create on a computer, that you would agree they should be paid for; even if they show a demonstration copy to someone.

                • TootGuitar@reddthat.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  You say “ask the dictionary” — multiple dictionary definitions as well as Wikipedia say that theft requires the intent to deprive the original owner of the property in question, which obviously doesn’t apply to copyright infringement of digital works.

                  You say “ask the law” — copyright infringement is not stealing, they are literally two completely different statutes, at least in the US.

                  So, what the hell are you talking about? Copyright infringement is not theft.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          I love how you guys play these mental gymnastics to justify this shit to yourselves.

          I love how you bootlickers always deny that anyone could possibly have a principled objection to modern intellectual property laws. I don’t need to “justify” at all. I rarely even pirate anything, but I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong when I do.

        • aylex@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          “Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.”

          Just telling on yourself 😂

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Intellectual property is not a thought that you own. It’s an idea

          Ah, it’s an idea, not a thought. Gotcha. Glad you cleared that up.

          Something that actually takes time to make, often a whole lot of time.

          Who the fuck cares? Dinner also takes a great deal of time to make.

          Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.

          That’s not true. People have been telling stories and creating art since humanity climbed down from the trees. Compensation might encourage more people to do it, but there was never a time that people weren’t creating, regardless of compensation. In addition, copyright, patents and trademarks are only one way of trying to get compensation. The Sistine chapel ceiling was painted not by an artist who was protected by copyright, but by an artist who had rich patrons who paid him to work.

          Maybe “Meg 2: The Trench” wouldn’t have been made unless Warner Brothers knew it would be protected by copyright until 2143. But… maybe it’s not actually necessary to give that level of protection to the expression of ideas for people to be motivated to make them. In addition, maybe the harms of copyright aren’t balanced by the fact that people in 2143 will finally be able to have “Meg 2: The Trench” in the public domain.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Intellectual property is a scam, the term was invented to convince dumb people that a government-granted monopoly on the expression of an idea is the same thing as “property”.

      You can’t “steal” intellectual property, you can only infringe on someone’s monopoly rights.

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        This feels like an easy statement to make when it applies to Disney putting out new Avatar movies. Then, suddenly, you realize how extensively it causes problems when you’re a photographer trying to get magazines to pay for copies of the once-in-a-lifetime photo you took, instead of re-printing it without your permission.

        “InfORMaTioN wANts tO Be FrEe, yO.”

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Then, suddenly, you realize how extensively it causes problems when you’re a photographer trying to get magazines to pay for copies of the once-in-a-lifetime photo you took

          That’s a pretty specific example. Probably because in many cases photographers are paid in advance. A wedding photographer doesn’t show up at the wedding, take a lot of pictures, then try to work out a deal with the couple getting married. They negotiate a fee before the wedding, and when the wedding is over they turn over the pictures in exchange for the money. Other photographers work on a salary.

          Besides, even with your convoluted, overly-specific example, even without a copyright, a magazine would probably pay for the photo. Even if they didn’t get to control the copying of the photo, they could still get the scoop and have the picture out before other people. In your world, how would they “reprint” it without your permission? Would they break into your house and sneakily download it from your phone or camera?

          • Katana314@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            This is the kind of situation I’m citing:

            https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/one-mans-endless-hopeless-struggle-to-protect-his-copyrighted-images/

            A lot of photography is not based on planning ahead before being paid (a person requests Photo X, and then pays on delivery). Nature photographers, and in fact many other forms of artists, produce a work before people know/feel they want it, and then sell it based on demonstration - a media outlet notices their work in a gallery or on their website, and then requests use of that work themselves.

            The struggles of the above insect photographer are even with the existing IP laws - they only ask for fair compensation from what they’ve put so much effort into, and VERY MANY media outlets don’t bother; to say nothing of giving a charitable donation.

            • merc@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              then sell it based on demonstration - a media outlet notices their work in a gallery or on their website

              So, they choose to rely on copyright, when they could do work for hire instead.

              they only ask for fair compensation from what they’ve put so much effort into

              No, they ask for unfair compensation based on copyrights.

              • Katana314@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                No - they CAN’T do work for hire. Are you listening?

                “Hi. I do really cool photos. Please hire me to take one, and after you’ve paid me, you can see it.”

                According to you, that’s a comprehensive resume and advertisement for a photographer, absent of a single graphic. According to you, a client could come to a consult about buying a photo, sneak their phone camera up to the print, and say “Never mind about payment! I just copied it. You can keep the print! So long, loser.”

                You’re not even trying to imagine the impossible hurdles such a craft would have trying to earn enough to eat food every day, much less have a roof over their head. If you have nothing substantive to add, everyone on this site should be done with you.

                • merc@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  No - they CAN’T do work for hire. Are you listening?

                  Your inability to imagine anything other than the status quo is really depressing.

      • bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Imagine if startrek was written with IP in mind. Instead of all these wunderkinds being all gung ho about implementing their warp field improvements on your reactor you’d get some ferengi shilling the latest and greatest “marketable” blech engine improvements.

        Fiction is much better without reality leeching in.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Star Trek was set in a future utopia. One of the key things about the show is that it’s a post-scarcity world where even physical objects can be replicated.

          They definitely wrote the series with IP in mind… in that their view of a future utopia was one where not only did copyright etc. not exist, but nobody cared much about the ownership of physical objects either.

        • TootGuitar@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          For someone who bitches all over this thread about people strawmanning their position, this is a pretty fucking great reply.

          Hint: one can be pissed about people throwing around the not-based-in-legal-reality term “intellectual property.” One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft, a strategy which has apparently worked mightily well on you. One can be all of those things, and yet still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”

          What you posted was a textbook definition of a straw man.

            • TootGuitar@reddthat.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              I don’t know how the original poster meant it, but one possible way to interpret it (which is coincidentally my opinion) is that the concept of intellectual property is a scam, but the underlying actual legal concepts are not. Meaning, the law defines protections for copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets, and each of those has their uses and are generally not “scams,” but mixing them all together and packaging them up into this thing called intellectual property (which has no actual legal basis for its existence) is the scam. Does that make sense?

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Exactly, “intellectual property” doesn’t exist. It’s a term that was created to try to lump together various unrelated government-granted rights: trademark, copyright, patents, etc. They’re all different, and the only thing they have in common is that they’re all rights granted by the government. None of them is property though. That was just a clever term made up by a clever lobbyist to convince people to think of them as property, rather than government-granted rights related to the copying of ideas. Property is well-understood, limited government-granted rights to control the copying of ideas is less well understood. If the lobbyists can get people to think of “intellectual property” they’ve won the framing of the issue.

                • TootGuitar@reddthat.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Could we stop having this meta-debate about what a person who is not either of us meant, and instead could you comment on the substance of my post?

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      If no one thinks that, why are you saying it right now?

      Actual theft of intellectual property would involve somehow tricking the world into thinking you hold the copyright to something that someone else owns.