For the stupid communist argument people: your idea of eliminating IP is a very communist idea, in the literal sense of the world. You want to share ideas and allow knowledge to advance without limitation. IP is a very capitalist idea: allowing people to make money off of their inventions.

And what’s so wrong with copyright? Giving someone some say for the expresison they create. If I write a song, what right do you have to it? I wrote it for me. Not for the public good.

And pharamceutical companies have advanced the science we all live by through the patent system. It’s worked.

And I guess that’s my big complaint with the anti-IP crowd: How can you say it doesn’t work? Look around. all the content you love? Made with copyright. Funded with copyright. All your technology? Made and patented. Funded through a patent. The IP rights that you want to eliminate help fund further advancement of society.

Let’s not be too hasty in throwing that out the window.

Somehow they don’t patronize “Sharing an Caring” individuals.I think maybe they’ll convert Intellectual Property to Shareware

How can someone own (!) immaterial things?

Try to explain that?

Only material things can be owned. And the can only be owned by persons (which own themselves and therefore can own other things).

Self-owners can own material things in the world (by appropriation) and the can make contracts with other self-owners (in which way the can also acquire property owned by others).

Ideas cannot be owned. Procedures cannot be owned. Formulas cannot be owned. And so own.

To think ideas can be owned means that you are a socialist who wants to impede the rights of rightful property owners.

As long as you pay the patent holder some royalty, it should be okay.

It’s taking place on The Pirate Bay right now. It sends a message to arrogant companies like EA and Politicians like Biden who take bribes from the RIAA that we’re sick of their sleazy ways. We’re sick of them writing laws that advantage Disney, extend copyrights that should have expired long ago. We’re sick of public domain rights being stripped. We’re sick of patent lawyers and politicians in the pocket of their biggest donors.

The people have spoke and said ENOUGH. Lets make the RIAA an election issue.

it really is no use trying to be common sense to the table.

Survival of the fittest works.

I’m still waiting for some to answer the question — why is it OK for some company to sink tons of money into a cure for something, only so that someone like me can go find the recipe, cook it up in my garage, sell it for 10% of the cost (since I didn’t actually have to invest in any sort of research, or hire doctors or anything) and put them out of business?

This isn’t about us “allowing” them to do anything. It’s about the government pretending that people can own ideas and forcing everyone else to go along with that so the company can make more money.

I am not advocating copyright of movies/music/media. I am referring STRICTLY to the examples posed in this article about things like biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, i.e. things that clearly make a positive impact in our world by saving lives, but still cost a shitton of money to research, with no way around it.

You can’t invent a genetic cancer treatment on a shoestring budget the way you can get GarageBand and create a song, it’s not the same thing. For those companies that spend lots of time/money creating legitimate products that cure illness and such, I think they should be allowed to earn back their investment and feed their employees, don’t you?

I do not advocate IP law the way we have now at all. I have said that many times. I am not saying the system is good. I’m just saying, if we tear it all down, we still should at least put something in place for situations like this.

@34, are you REALLY refuting my argument by just saying that people aren’t worth expensive cures? That if it costs Genentech billions of dollars to find a cure for something, they should just give up and let people die instead? Man, this problem goes deeper than I thought with some of you people. Wait until your first kid gets leukemia in high school and then see how you feel about that one.

Jiff
http://www.anonymize.us.tc

Screw them and their kind. Artists can do just find without them. And whomever said about artist not being able to eat and getting coins by street performing, that’s just a ridiculous statement. Besides, i’ve heard of street performers getting several hundred dollars a day. Nothing to a big wig in some cushy office, but to the normal person, that’s a lot of money.

Anyway, i’m off to burn some latest cd’s and leaving them for people free in public places. Enjoy not getting a cent all you RIAA pricks. I’ll never buy one of your cd’s or movies ever again.

Very easy. That way Intellectual holder have a means to further expand both market and profit. And it works off the current system.

My uncle has created an application generator for IT systems, he spent 20 years coding the thing. Now if i was in the same shoes, i would release the product for educational purposes only and those who wish to make a profit will pay royalties. Its a win-win situation.

for some reason.

(/idiot redundancy off)

That’s capitalism. All companies are like that, it’s their nature.

as for all the copyright anarchists who begrudge the rich, part of me hopes you get what you want: a world with absolutely no protection for content creators. where the best case scenario for musicians is to be treated like common street performers. throw some spare change in their guitar case if you have the inclination…where movies are all made on shoestring budgets because no one is going to sink millions into something that will just end up being stolen.

i hope you get what you want. a world where artists can’t eat and innovation and culture have been completely and utterly stifled.

I think alot of the worlds problems would be solved by shooting the people in power and starting anew. Sadly this probably isn’t going to happen any time soon.

We’re all fucked in the long run with all these money hording lawyers and corps’ reaching for ever fatter pay packets, And they really couldn’t give a damn where and how they get them.

REVOLT!

-God

The problem is that in this day and age, it isn’t really necessary to ‘sign’ in order to be heard or become famous. (as a sidenote, supposedly GiR2007′s music from his video called ‘Pancakes!’ on Youtube hit #3 chart on the radio in Isreal) All of these issues stem from these companies trying to keep an iron grip on their revenue stream when they are using a model that is fundamentally obsolete.

I thought the artist owns the rights, but RIAA is the distribution rights? So, how can they sue for copyright infringement then?

Rearden Metal FTW!

Open Source is a perfect example of how it should be done. As long as you reconise the creator of a peice of work, you should be able to build on there progress. Ultimately the western world is strangling it’s own development, where we’re teaching people to use microsoft, places in the third world are using linux and growing up to be better with the limited technology they have.

You can close down a central server. You cannot close down the entire internet. Beauty of decentralization.

Twinkle Twinkle little star… or that long range communications satellite.

Even in North Korea, you can have access to the uncensored intermess.

P2P is also what potentially can solve many things. Simply put, liberation of P2P will be a liberation of information in general, which will doubtlessly help many human rights causes worldwide.

Of what interest are some peoples with HIV/AIDS to the wellbeing of a corporation such as a drug company if not for profit? Would it serve corporate interest to lose control over use of the property in order to allow for competition to gain strength, and as a consequence to potentially threaten as a challenger? Why give your power away?

I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand. Entities with power tend to use it to serve selfish interest. That’s nature itself. Media companies rely on control of the property to profit from it and in all-likelyhood really don’t give a shite about helping some poor little man. But why should they? They’ve attained a position and they damn well would like to keep it. What may they stand to gain from relaxing their control over the product? They’re a business designed specifically to profit. The more profit, the more power, the more assured their survival.

How many people you know willing to give up their niceties for the wellbeing of others for little or nothing in return?

Making up a number is no way to win an argument but I’ll make it easy for you… They should not spend that kinda money at all…. Not for the modern day drugs that cure you ONLY if they don’t kill you first…!!! If $5 billion is involved then lets feed some starving kids… clean up the environment so we don’t get sick…
and lets make people who are so sick that they need a 5 billion dollar pill comfy so they can die without pain and in dignity..

And then, in the case of software usually, you are FORCED to agree with an EULA, which can be draconian in itself. Although, an EULA isn’t as strong as copyright law as it is an agreement, and they aren’t always enforceable.

Patents and Copy’right’ serve — in a very real sense — to prevent a “market” from happening by placing artificial restraints on who is “permitted” to compete. True, the “first sale doctrine” fosters the APPEARANCE of a “free market”, in that it people are “permitted” to re-sell previously-owned copies at a price of THEIR choice and without the copyright “owner’s” permission — but this little “loophole” is one of the things that the Media/software corporations really want to destroy. Monopolists want, well, monopoly — for as long as possible, and backed up by as brutal of punishments as they can realistically achieve. THAT’S why penalties for non-crimes like “copyright infringement” are so much larger than for REAL, violent offenses like physical assault and rape.

Make no mistake: NOBODY benefits fro IP “law” except for the corporate vermin who manage to buy up all the “rights” to everything, so that we all pay — and pay — and pay.

Studies? Associate Supreme court Justice Stephen Breyer published “The Uneasy Case for Copyright” back in the 1970s, and almost nobody gave a shit.

The ONLY thing that’ll change the current IP regime is the fact that there is a vast (and growing), planet-wide “movement” on a multitude of fronts, rapidly making the current “laws” — AND those corporations relentlessly milking them — look ridiculous, if not downright evil.

Groove on, Y’all.

Everone , do this.we need to fight the man as people, as one.

Force = copying CDs and leaving them in random places where people can find them. Simple civil disobedience.

I’m taking part, i’m on the peoples side, which side are you choosing?

I hope that was a sarcastic comment. I’m pretty sure the world ran fine (well as fine as pure capitalism runs, like a nicely sludged engine for anyone not rich) during the Industrial Revolution without IP. Not to mention real communism (not what’s in China
or what the USSR was)

While we’re at it, communism isn’t perfect, but it’s just as bad as capitalism if you think about it, neither works they way it should and both look good on paper. Just because the “World Police If It Puts Us Higher Than Others”
was at war with the USSR almost 20 years ago doesn’t mean we still are, and *gasp* communism isn’t out to destroy the world, grow up.

Anyway, what’s more important, the intangible imaginary value of money or gold (value varies amongst people, hence intangible and imaginary) or human lives that are, god forbid, something we can actually touch. Quite frankly, any pharmaceutical company that thinks turning a bigger profit is more important than helping people should be shut down, or put in control by people who have their priorities straight. They can have all the money in the world, but it won’t make a difference when everyone’s dying because it’s not profitable to make medicine anymore.

Speaking of the control of information, already…. ;)

Socialism is not gonna get you high speed internet, btw.

Nor will communism…

We live is an age of barely concealed fascism…

If you don’t believe that the filesharing ‘issue’ isn’t a symptom of Global Facism, or an outright grab at levers of control of information, I’m not sure what better parallels could be drawn than the p2p = open pharma concept.

Information, and I really am not talking about WALL*E or some band’s CD, is going to be a restricted resource. Think: the whole web will require a licence, and it won’t be a complete listing of web resources they’ll be giving you. Just what they want you to hear and see.

But they will use this P2P issue to develop closed systems of interaction, and to cajole us all into accepting it.

I just wish people, when they decry their lack of access to movies and music and software would consistently include SUNDRY INFORMATION in their list of demands. Every time. Then it might be regarded as something other than what they are seemingly calling hedonistic theft, or whatever they are coloring it in as these days.

To say that “ideas” are “property” is not saying that ideas belong to certain people. Indeed, even if a copy of a CD gets copied from one friend to another, the fact is that the RIAA had no part in it – the RIAA’s copy of the CD did not change hands, the RIAA still has their own copy of the CD, and own exclusive rights to their copy. But what copyright does is it tries to control what everybody else does with it – essentially communism. For an analogy, say that rice was copyrighted. Then people would be forbidden to take the seeds, and all seeds would belong to the “owner.” This takes away the right of the individual to own their own property of rice, and hands over all control to a central entity. This is communism. Same with copyright. It makes people give up their rights to their own property of their CDs, and hands over all control to the central entity called the RIAA. How could you get more violation of property rights than this? This is communism, pure and simple.

All intellectual property is capitalist.

“I don’t see what your saying… Copyright is against the free market. It’s just further regulation on what we can buy and sell. It doesn’t sound very capitalist to me. It’s just more government regulation on the economy… which reminds me of socialism.”

Capitalism vs socialism isn’t about control, regulation, etc. It’s about who owns property (capital); society/the state, or private citizens.

Don’t believe the cold war hysteria of “Freedom vs No Freedom”. That’s not what capitalism and socialism is about.

“Red China = centralised control economy. Blue USA = free market economy”

China is an extreme form of capitalism. Wal Mart, Nike, etc, other corporations are there exploiting the Chinese with capitalism.