So says Big Copyright, which adopted the term for copyright infringers because of “its suggestions of theft, destruction, and violence.” But now, the “pirates”have “co-opted the term, adopting it with gusto and hoisting the Jolly Roger across the Internet (The Pirate Bay being the most famous example).”
I agree. Copyright infringers should not be called pirates. A pirate is a robber, plunderor, predator. The term much better describes the patent and copyright lobbies, which use state monopoly grants to plunder and rob the masses.
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Argh, me hearties, let me tell ye the tale of the fiercest bilge rat buccaneer who e’er weighed anchor or swung a cutlass … his name struck fear in the hearts of lubbers and sea dogs alike … no one but his poor mother e’er knew his real name, but he was known in every port across the globe as the dread pirate Cap’n Copycat!
Obviously you guys aren’t Pastafarians.
If you did, you would know that there is a direct link between the decline in pirates and global warming. So we need more pirates to stave off global warming.
See here for more: http://www.venganza.org/
The appropriate name for them is counterfeiter.
Piracy implies danger and a certain level of adventure.
*facepalm*
What facepalm? Isn’t there a parallel here to counterfeiting? Let’s say a private business issues a private paper currency in a private law society.
What do you call people who print unauthorized notes and pass them off as real? Stephan_Kinsella would claim that “hey, as long as people can’t tell the difference and can’t complain, no unlibertarian act was committed”. But for reasonable people who do see something wrong with this, how can you justify exclusivity in printing the notes without copyright?
Can’t they still be counterfeit, and bad, even if perfect copies?
Suppose, as I do, that people who make fake money are counterfeiters. That still does not make people who possess non-financial information against state wishes counterfeiters. Call them IP violators or what have you, but they’re certainly not counterfeiters, because mere information, in this case songs, are not currency.
The facepalm seems like a rather harsh treatment, but I suppose it was a response to the irrational nature of the ‘conterfeiter’ claim.
Monetary use of a good is distinct from its non-monetary uses. Counterfeiting is harmful only within the realm of the object in question’s monetary uses, NOT because of its non-monetary uses. In an economy with gold as its currency, are gold miners counterfeiters? If we accept the definition of “Counterfeiter” as “Someone who increases the money supply” then yes they are. However no sane person would say gold mining is somehow immoral because of this, as gold mining brings wealth in the form of gold’s non-monetary uses. Calling someone who violates “IP rights” is not a counterfeiter under this definition.
Right, so counterfeiting intellectual property is only a crime if you exchange your counterfeited copy to someone else. You can make as many copies of the product that you have purchased for yourself. This is how copyright law works.
The same which is true of money is true of any other kind of restricted-supply good.
So if I grow some carrots in my backyard and sell them at the local farmer’s market, am I a counterfeiter?
The way I see it, copying IP is not counterfeiting because it is creating a copy of something that has actual value. Counterfeiting is the copying of something that represents something of value, without creating the thing of value that is backing it.
So trading that item to someone does not matter. You are not trading a promise on a thing of value. You are trading a thing of value.
I’m with Greg. For example copying music creates more music. It does not leave one original file (the actual music, mp3 or whatever) and one second file (the dreaded copy) that is masquerading as music. They both play the same music in the same way. The original file still exists. The actual file it not harmed or corrupted.
These IP conversations seem to go downhill pretty quickly so I’ll step out early. Enjoy the weekend folks!
Copying does not produce more music, it produces more instances of the same music. For new music to be produced, a producer has to actually compose it and invest capital in this process.
Why would he invest capital in a process that he won’t own the products of?
Counterfeiting is a fraud perpetrated on the contract party, not on the creator of the original. It is the contract parties, not the creator of the original, that decide whether the authenticity is a relevant factor for the contract. The appropriate equivalent in “IP” would be plagiarism.
Silas is confused as usual.
Counterfeiting is an offense if and to the extent it amounts to a type of fraudulent theft. If I buy a chicken from you with a note that I say is “genuine” but it is not, I am not giving you what you bargained for.
This has absolutely nothing to do with learning from others, emulating them, copying the way they use and impattern their own property.
It doesn’t have to do with IP because … You Say So? Answer the question: I start up a private currency. Someone else counterfeits and debases it by making good-enough replicas. Let’s say merchants can’t tell the difference. Is a crime still being committed? Your usual line is that, hey, if the recipient can’t dell the difference, there’s no fraud, and only they have the right to sue. So, the issue of the currency can’t protect the supply.
To say this is wrong, you have to appeal to a species of IP.
So do you really think that counterfeiting is okay as long as you’re good enough at it? Or are you just gonna go with the standard cop-out that IP isn’t “about” that?
*sigh*
Once again, a comment which completely ignores basic monetary theory.
Let me ask you a question. Why should issuers of currency be allowed to control the supply?
Once again Silas, it is the question that needs to be resolved between the issuer of the unauthentic currency and the recipient thereof (fraud), rather than between the issuer of the authentic and unauthentic currency (monopoly/”property”). The core question is not whether creating replicas is being prohibited, but whether such a restriction applies to third parties. You can put any sort of restriction into a contract regardless of IP laws, without the necessity of property rights on the things being restricted. If I prohibit my child to climb a tree, that that does not require that I own any trees.
You have come up with inventive analogies, and for that I commend you. However, at the same time, regrettably, you miss the point.
The crime in “counterfeiting” is not the copying–indeed, the Federal Government even has guidelines on how to copy money!–it’s the passing off of copies as legal tender. That is, “counterfeiting” has an element of fraud involved. This is why you can copy currency if you reduce it beyond 75%, or enlarge it beyond 150%, or copy only one side if you copy it in color.
If you copy something, and let everyone know that it’s a copy and not the original, it’s not counterfeiting at all!
The term counterfeiter implies fraud, which is not present, even if copyright “infringement” is actually theft. At least, counterfeiting was fraud back in the good old days when money represented actual goods.
I think the more appropriate term is simply “file sharer”.
The appropriate term is obviously “Champion of Justice.” ;p
I was trying to go for something connotation-free.
So was I.
lol!
Yeah, I also hate those evil people who use government grants of monopoly privilege on plots of land or structures that have ALREADY BEEN BUILT (so what’s the point of letting them continue to rest on their laurels and profit off of it when it doesn’t need owners to function).
Trite slogans is definitely the way to accomplish serious analysis.
The government’s role in property ought not be to grant monopoly rights to existing structures, but, at most, to defend people’s natural monopoly rights to their own resources–a right taken from the fact that resources such as land or builings are scarce and therefore must be protected. Information, on the other hand, can easily be copied in as great a quantity as one would like, so a government granting a “right” to stop all other people from possessing information is, even if justifiable, not of the same nature as rights to physical property.
The capitalization of the words ALREADY BEEN BUILT in a sarcastic comparison of physical goods to comparison is also most certainly not a way to accomplish serious analysis either.
What “government grant of monopoly privilege”, etc.? As far as I know, if you built a magic plot-of-land-copying machine, you could copy as many plots of land as you like (complete with structures, plants, farm animals and pets), and the government wouldn’t complain in the least (in fact, they’d be rubbing their hands together in glee…more land to tax!)
I think some of you need to watch this video:
“Copying is not theft”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ&feature=related
For those of you familiar with the song:
We are the pirates
Who don’t do anything
We just stay home
And torrent tracks
And if you ask us
To do anything…
We’ll just tell you,
We leech off everyone.
Whenever the aliens make contact we’re going to take them into custody
for illegally listening to and taping all of our broadcasts that went into space.
Alien pirate bastards!
I’ll bet they get free satellite too.
I do as much harm to the music industry as any so-called “pirate” without every breaking the law. As a consequence of the RIAA’s lawsuits against file-sharers, I refuse to buy music from the big labels and only listen to music if it is from a free and legal source. How can you abide my heartless cruelty at letting their great and wondrous works of art go to waste by not supporting them with my money? What a leech I am, indeed.
Imagine A owns an apple shop.
Imagine B steals an apple of A.
A therefore has one apple less. He has lost the value of that one apple.
Now imagine A sells music tracks.
B copies one of As music tracks without paying.
What has A lost? What if B never intended to buy one of As tracks (and just collected it because it didn’t come with more costs?)?
Clearly I have wondered into a foreign land of legal-type knowledge comments. I admire your use of metaphor to try to get at fundamental truth, but the metaphors are, in this case, not especially clarifying. A music track is not be an apple, or gold, or currency. But it is still the product of someone’s work. If the track is for sale, it has a monetary value to its maker. To acquire that track without paying for it is theft.
I have to say, I agree that “pirate” adds a glamor to the theft that isn’t especially helpful. Yet ‘”thief” seems out of proportion to the small scale nature of this crime. What shall we call illegal downloads? “Technically, ethically wrong” seems a little weak.
My developer is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using Movable-type on several websites for about a year and am nervous about switching to another platform. I have heard very good things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress posts into it? Any help would be really appreciated!
Ummmm . . . did mises become a programming board all of a sudden?
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