http://underlore.com/one-possible-solution/

So long as ignoring the profit motive might mean starvation and homelessness, the profit motive argument is applicable across the board.

The only way to fix that is to take homelessness and starvation off the table.

These people who for the past decade or so and a long time ahead have been and will continue to enjoy this absurd privilege and spend most of their time creating their moral alibi (rationalizing) and thereafter announcing it publicly to spread this moral confusion, they are also the ones to tell you – the creator of the product they’re consuming – that if people are being cheapskates and exploiting the fact that you’re basically defenseless against organized clans of delusional proud-to-be-non-paying customers then _you’re_ the problem, since _they_ do not _want_ to pay for your product.

They don’t feel like it, their own cash in their own wallet is to stay put, but still they want what you have created and they will of course get it. The reason why you’re not getting paid what you are worth is because your resources have been stolen and sold on the black market, and that’s also your own fault. Since you did not protect it (you _did_ publish it, mainly online) it’s your own fault that they have access to your product and therefore will reap what _you_ have sown. If you try to protect it, they will still grab it, and this time it’s your fault because you tried to listen to them when they shouted that there is a demand but no supply.

In these times, where everyone is complaining (mainly pirates, as part of the rationalization process mentioned earlier) that there are no great artists around, I think I know why there isn’t. If Beethoven lived today, just as Dostoevsky and perhaps Kubrick about to enter the film industry, they would all instantly commit suicide. Some people are highly specialized in what they do, because they have invested all their time and energy on improving their by birth given talent for one specific route of productive achievement. They might no be able to tie their own shoelaces, but they can create great works of art. All of them would’ve today been eaten by the pack of hyenas that we call the organized piracy movement, both financially and on a more deeper level.

Doing great stuff and getting no reward kind of leads to people stop doing great stuff. But what humankind has created pre-Napster perhaps is enough, and perhaps this is all we’re getting, until one day this shit is placed in some kind of order. I doubt it will happen soon though, since the majority of the population on this planet have a shortsighted focus based self-interest that will always have priority, and governments all over the world are too afraid to upset the majority of their voters.

I think we need some kind of revolution, or perhaps a total restructuring of the human being, _or_ piracy could start to be combatted just as any other crime (which it is), with actual results that will deter the prevalence of the act and perhaps lead to better a better situation for the producers and the paying customers – the only two parties that should be allowed to even voice an opinion on the matter.

I hate all of you.

With your first four paragraphs (and your finishing one), your descriptions assemble around the thesis that social rules are what keep human societies from collapsing. Therefore, we need to give them a certain level of legitimacy. I hope I’m not doing your words too much a disservice by boiling them down in that way.

So I want to address this. Social rules are what keep human societies from collapsing, yes. However, they still operate and are formed from to the environment on which they rest. They can’t simply be anything.To get an understanding of this, imagine that your physical reality operated in a different ways. Say something stupid, like living for 500 years was the norm, or that people had perfect memories. How would that effect the system of social laws? Really. Imagine it. You can probably see how some rules would be completely absurd, and others would become more important.

What pro-sharing of information people are arguing is that the internet has fundamentally shifted the physical reality that our social systems need to be built from. What it has done is to be so incredibly efficient at the dissemation of information that it has shocked the world. The battle, then, is between those who see the new environment as one that enables previous social rules to change and those who attempt to lock down the status quo. However, because the constraints have changed, the ability to lock them down has also changed.

There was a really nice article on how the piratebay is the most efficient library in the world on falkvinge’s site awhile ago. http://falkvinge.net/2012/12/07/the-pirate-bay-is-the-worlds-most-efficient-public-library/ The piratebay has done very similar things to the NYC public library. It distributes much of the same material, for free. But with the physical library, proximity and travel are required, and you run the risk that the book you want is checked out to somebody else.

Isn’t it interesting to see how the concept of a library as a distribution center of free books actually can be seen as less free than TPB? More resources are required to check a book out. There are other risks. Free distribution of information is on a continuum and libraries are not situated on an edge but are more in the middle. Less resources are used on TPB and therefore they are more free, although still not completely.

So that’s a little bit of information if you are interested in understanding, perhaps, how so many people are talking past each other, and why “social rules as necessarily fixed” might be a central contention.

One thing I wonder is why you feel the following: “I kind of feel sorry for someone who places so little value on their own word.”

Anyway…

I kind of feel sorry for someone who places so little value on their own word. I’m sure you can think of lots of things that you in someway might like to do, but don’t do because you agree not to do (including rationally because they’re dangerous, or you might be punished, or because of your ethics) not because of any laws of physics preventing you so.

Nothing actually physically stops you (or anyone else) from running red lights, shoplifting, punching someone you don’t like in the face, cheating on your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend, treating your children poorly and so on, but we disapprove of such behaviour not because of laws but because of the principles on which laws may be based.

(In fact, I’m sure you wouldn’t try the similar `if you don’t want me to cheat on you you should make it physically impossible for me to do so’ argument on a partner (the consequences could be dire).

The reality of the world is that most human interaction is based not just on physics but on trust and tacit agreements, and that economically and scientifically advanced societies (such as the modern western world) became so advanced because of the simulataneous development of practical morality. I.e behaving in a `civilised’ manner. Obvious society is not perfect, and there are certainly advatages to different forms of government and economics than those currently, and variously (internationally speaking), applied. However, I am speaking in a general sense.

Now, being for an open market (based on equal opportunity) and relatively small government, I find making such interactions matters of (criminal) law regretable: when laws have to be inforced, it waste time, reasources, endevour and money. But civic law is useful when it comes to speeding up an economy and creating a method of making shortcuts for agreements between suppliers and purchasers. Principles of free market includes negatiating a fair price, but having to make such negotiations every single time a transaction is made can be a huge inconvenience, hence the practicle application of laws and statutes (which should be based on rational, informed, observation, industry knowledge and humanist ethics).

Your statement `Make something that I cannot give away for free’ sounds like you are in favour of uniform copy protection, which is a surprising position coming from a frequenter of this site. Far better, I think, if all product is potentially sharable so that it can be so at the time of the creators chosing, combined with sensibly made and applied copyright law. (Also, speaking of economics, one of the great contributing factors to the benefits of teh industrial revolution and enlightenment is the greater opportunity it gave workers for specilisation. It is far more economically efficient for an expert baker, fo instance, to share his wares with other product/service providers than for everybody to have to spend some of their daily time making bread. Likewise, I suspect it may be better for musicians to be able to focus on being musicians, via making agreements with other service providers, rather than to be forced to be self managed entrepreneurs at every turn in the market).

As I have stated elsewhere, I do believe that limitations on terms need to be reapplied, and that in many areas coporations have taken advantage of copyright to the disadvantage of creators and consumers. But I believe that problem lies with their actions being unethical, not the principles of the berne convention (et al) prima facie.

May be I am building a world on fairy dust, but it is a reality that the human mind treats imagined situations and emotional responces in the same way it treats physical stimuli; chemically. Pain is a chemical reaction, and so is love, and fear, and remorse. I believe there is significant evidence to suggest that a moral and fair society is a freer one and also one that is economically more powerful and of benefit in the long term – and not just `for everyone’ but specifically for the poweful and sucessful as well (e.g. dicators live in fear, exemplars live with pride).