COICA - The Internet Blacklist - Page 7

On November 20 2010 12:40 Railxp wrote:



No, it is not quite that simple.

Take for an example: I wrote a poem. You then memorize my poem from reading it in a bookstore. You go home and write my poem down. The pen is yours, the paper is yours, the time spent is yours. In effect, everything about the poem you've copied is yours. You don't make copies to sell the poem, you just have it in your bedside table for personal enjoyment. Now is it right for me to demand that you be put in jail for "pirating" my poem?

In essence, electronic media is information, just like my poem is information. The pen that you used to recreate the poem is just like your PC at home. Its your PC and you are just "memorizing" and "rewriting" the 1s and 0s of digital information. The change in medium doesn't change anything. Piracy is not theft because the original creator has not lost anything through being copied from.

Most will agree that the creator of an idea should be credited, not too many people dispute this. So I am not proposing that everyone put on their eye patches and sail the torrential seas of the interwebs for plundered booty, but I am trying to demonstrate that it is not as clear cut as some people would like to paint it as.

To illuminate another facet of this complex issue, suppose two developers are neck to neck in releasing a program/game/movie. Both have their websites that are different in layout and text, but are essentially selling the same product because the product is so similar in function and by pure coincidence, style. Neither knows the existence of the other. If this law is passed, the first developer to release said product could sue and use this law to shut down the other guy's website, even if the target audience spoke a different language. Which in turn could mean an entire microcosm of innovation is shut down, because the website could have a small forum of innovative open source guys working on modding the product. Therefore any law arguing for intellectual property rights directly impedes innovative progress because it limits the number of talented people who have access to it.

Yes, the previous example may have many coincidental and circumstantial holes in it, but I am only using it to point out the grey area in these arguments.

Many people support copyright laws because they think "IF WE DONT DO THIS THEN THE POOR REATOR WILL BE LEACHED DRY BY ALL THE ASSHOLE PIRATES!!!"

There are other options. For example, it can be approached from a contractual law point of view. Where when you buy something you have to sign a contract that you will not replicate it. Then the creator can be protected through contractual obligation, rather than from copyright law.

I am not a law-literate person by any means, so i would defer to anyone with more expertise, but these are the shades of grey that I feel are so often overlooked in people who rush for the Banhammer for all solutions.

On November 20 2010 17:00 FabledIntegral wrote:


lmao piracy is not a theft because the original person hasn't lost anything? you're full of it and it's an absolutely terrible argument.

On September 28 2010 13:03 b3h47pte wrote:
the websites i use.
google, gmail, teamliquid, facebook, xkcd, cad-comic, msdn, cnn, moddb.

for some reason, i doubt any of these websites are going to affected so whatever