"Copyright laws exist to restrict people's rights to free speech and freedom of communication. And in the age of the internet, business models based on scarcity of copies are obsolete; they cannot be propped up except by restricting the utility of the internet."

Businesses were never based on scarcity of copies, but scarcity of creation. The latest version of Photoshop can't be created with once click of a button. It takes many programmers and designers thousands of hours. Copying the bits is the easy part. When anybody can create (not copy) photoshop in their homes, I will agree with you.

"The copyright cartels (RIAA, MPAA, etc) want every computer to be a DRM-crippled locked down device like the iPad, and for themselves to have the power to kick anyone off the internet by merely accusing them of copyright infringement. If you don't want that future, it's time to support the Pirate Party."

There was an app designer awhile back that posted his sales numbers on reddit. He had 80% more sales on the iPhone. The reason? Android made it very easy for people to download his app and share it (and not pay) (he had the ability to see the people that pirated his app).

I wonder what would happen if I came out with the piratebay2 and claimed I was thepiraebay.com. If I made it look like the piratebay owned the site and I hurt their reputation in some way through disparaging comments. Would they (thepiratebay) come after me? After all, I'm not "stealing" anything. It should be fine, right?

My problem is that it has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Thepiratebay supporters want the ability to freely download commercial applications with no repercussions. I don't agree with this. If you don't want to buy a commercial application, that's fine (it's your right). But you shouldn't be able to download it for free without the owner's permission.

I also don't think many people realize what a world with no copyright would be like. Once a company got big enough, they would easily be able to take ideas from smaller companies just starting out. The smaller companies would have little legal recourse or enough resources to defend themselves.

"Maybe your app developer should seek other ways of getting money out of his app. Not for this specific case but "in app purchase" and ads in apps are two great ways of earning money."

So instead of dealing with the actual problem (people pirating). He should just give it away for free with ads?

Well, i don't see it as a problem. All I say is try to adapt to the current situation, don't try to impose rules on people so that your way of seeing things continue. If people prefer to watch movies at their home w/out paying for it, what the movie industry should do is to find other ways of making money, becuase bannign things is not going to work.

"Well, i don't see it as a problem. All I say is try to adapt to the current situation, don't try to impose rules on people so that your way of seeing things continue. If people prefer to watch movies at their home w/out paying for it, what the movie industry should do is to find other ways of making money, becuase bannign things is not going to work."

By adapting, they are showing people that it's okay. It's not. Rules are imposed by most stores/companies. When you go to a store and take something off the shelf, you are required to checkout and pay for it. If everyone in a particular store felt that they could just leave without paying, should the store just work this into their business model?

Your line of thinking is a growing entitlement problem. People (especially younger than 30) feel entitled to software, music, and movies on the Internet.

One of the main arguments is that it's not stealing because revenue is not lost (like a physical item). My argument has always been that over time, the perceived value of the items would go down (because more and more people would expect to get it for free). Many of the posts in this thread are proving my point.

> One of the main arguments is that it's not stealing because revenue is not lost (like a physical item). My argument has always been that over time, the perceived value of the items would go down (because more and more people would expect to get it for free).

I can see that, but I suppose I see the first one as a natural sort of property right, and the second one not. The right not to have someone come into your house and physically remove things from it seems like something reasonable for the government to protect. But the right not to have those things lose value? If someone can make items in my home worthless without actually entering my home and taking them, e.g. by finding a way to make cheap copies of them easily, then I don't see that as a property-rights issue.

I do think encouraging innovation and creation is a worthwhile social goal, but it's different from the idea of protecting property imo. It might be done via quasi-property sorts of temporary monopolies (like patents and copyright), or through government subsidy of the arts and sciences, or both, but it's basically social engineering either way, and which mixture of approaches we take should be based on some analysis of what benefits we get out of each.

I think the idea here is that if society is moving away from a situation where knowledge/information is scarce and its distribution is costly, then businesses should find a way to profit under the new scenario, rather than trying to enforce old methodologies.

Fair enough, but the current problem is that it's hard to make money creating content without spending a lot of time learning to be a publisher. Sure, you can blog, but what if your thing is writing novels or paintings in some obscure artistic style?

The disruption of the old publishing ecosystem has created many new opportunities, but also undermined many specialized niche markets. In other cases, content has become more accessible in one context but unaffordable in others. The loss of income from recorded music is one factor in the increasingly high cost of concert tickets, so it's a lot more expensive to go see your favorite band than it used to be, and the higher revenue stream from established acts makes it more difficult for new ones to get in front of a larger audience.

> Sure, you can blog, but what if your thing is writing novels or paintings in some obscure artistic style?

So what? The world doesn't owe you a living. It was there first.

Way to miss the point...a lack of distribution channels means less consumer choice too.

But wasn't the perceived problem that one distribution channel (the internet) is too cheap and plentiful?

If at all, one could argue about a lack of incentives to produce.

Not exactly, but I guess I didn't explain it very well.

The thing is internet distribution is very high volume and low margin. That's a better deal for the consumer if they want something popular or amateur (in the sense of something created for love rather than profit). But as it's become the dominant model (and as it was preceded by big-box discount stores, particularly in the book trade), publishers focused on a smaller number of big selling authors, and there was correspondingly less cross-subsidizing of niche or starting authors that didn't have as much mass appeal, at least in the short term.

It's harder for a new or specialized writer to get into print than it used to be, because publishers can no longer afford to front the cost of keeping their books in print while waiting for them to gain traction based on an editor's instinct about literary quality. Not that I think there's anything wrong with publishing on the internet, or that making money is the only valid metric of an author's quality, but while some writers develop more slowly than others they still need to pay the bills. I like science fiction, for example, and over the last 30 years the variety and quantity of writers and subjects on the shelves has declined as publishers prefer their established moneymakers, or stories that can be marketed as trilogies, and so forth. Thanks to the success of that Twilight series, for example, my local Borders seems to have devoted a good quarter of the sci-fi/fantasy section to books about young vampires in love.

I'm just saying that a lot of niche-specific marketing and editorial infrastructure has fallen apart as the industry has shifted course, and made it more difficult for some producers and consumers to find each other. That publishing infrastructure looked superfluous from a business perspective and so many large publishers cut those departments to remain competitive, but business is notoriously focused on the short term. MBA logic would argue against committing resources to publishing, say, the first novel of a contemporary Burroughs or Joyce.

I don't mean this is a disaster of course - real talent will usually get noticed, and as mainstream publishers become more conservative (in the sense of preferring material with mass market potential) there are disruptive opportunities for small publishers and the book business in particular has been through such cycles before. Amazon is effectively the bookstore with infinite shelves so publications of minor interest aren't crowded out by flavor-of-the-month writers the way they are in bookstores. I have no wish to turn the clock back, I just don't think the disruption of the old paradigm an automatic win for consumers in every respect.

Maybe you don't get to decide how other people distribute what they create.

Copyright laws exist to incentiveize creation of works and help creators make money from their works.

If you don't like DRM, fine, neither do I when it keeps me from watching movies I've paid for or time- and media- shifting content that I've bought. Go join the EFF then, not The Pirate Bay. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Without copyright, how creators make money on content? By locking it in DRM boxes. TPB is on the wrong side in this fight.