[noonespecial]

You don't fight piracy with laws. You fight piracy with products.

Most piracy is more about convenience than price. Thousands of smarter people than me have written reams about this. Its like fighting obesity. You don't just take a drug and get a quick fix, it takes a different mindset that causes the patient to live a different kind of life.

[DilipJ]

Convenience doesn't justify anything. It is more convenient for me to take a newspaper off my neighbor's lawn than it would be to contact the newspaper company and order a subscription, but that doesn't mean it's ok.

[Avenger42]

Your situation is theft - by taking the newspaper, you're precluding your neighbor from enjoying a product or service that he paid for. That's not the same as infringement - a closer newspaper-related metaphor might be you reading over your neighbor's shoulder on the bus.

[noonespecial]

I don't think they're trying to decide if its "ok" or not. I think they're trying to stop it.

You don't have to care about its morality in order to stop it (or at least sharply curtail it).

[malandrew]

That's theft not piracy. The marginal cost of production of that newspaper is non-zero. The marginal cost of production for information goods is zero.

[DilipJ]

Marginal cost shouldn't matter. What matters is consent. If the content creator does not consent for someone to enjoy his/her work without some level of compensation, then it is up to the customer to decide whether or not to purchase the work at the set price.

If the customer decides not to purchase it at that price, then his recourse his to purchase either a competing product or wait for the price to come down, not to steal it.

[malandrew]

Good thing there was no concept of intellectual properties rights when fire was discovered or the wheel invented.

You are aware that the concept of intellectual property rights didn't even begin with the concept of a creator having monopoly rights over their creations. Instead the concept of government granted monopolies begun during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1 with the East India Company came first. It wasn't until later that the concept of government granted monopolies was applied to intellectual goods. However, when the concept of government granted monopolies were applied to intellectual goods it was done so with the intention of maximizing the benefit of society by providing only enough incentive to encourage innovation not profits. Intellectual properties rights today have become completely divorced from their original intention of maximizing the commons due to the selfish pursuits of individuals and companies that have distorted the laws. Most of these distortions of the law weren't even introduced by those actually doing the inventing, but by heirs and assigns trying to establish and safeguard a constant source of revenue. That constant source of revenue has permitted many people to sit on their laurels instead of innovating.

Intellectual Property rights have been completely distorted from their original intent of encouraging innovation and maximizing benefit for society. Let me tell you who doesn't innovate: heirs and assigns. If anything, intellectual property rights have enabled a lot of people to make a living by not innovating.

[DilipJ]

i agree that heirs don't innovate. But copyright laws expire after a certain number of years after the creator's death, at which point they enter the public domain.

My question to you is, for material that is not in the public domain, do you believe that the innovator has a right to determine at what price they should sell their product at? And if not, is that not dissuading innovation?

And the 64 million dollar question, if they have a right to sell their product without digital infringement, how can you prevent this, without some bill law SOPA or PIPA?

[noonespecial]

But copyright laws expire after a certain number of years after the creator's death

I'd argue that this(1) is(2) not(3) true(4).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1831

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1909

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976

(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

[malandrew]

What people fail to realize about copyright in the US is that it was designed to enrich our country, and all US citizens.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to protect intellectual property with one and only one goal in mind. Enriching the United States and its citizens.

U.S. Constitution - Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 8. "The Congress shall have power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

They have the power to "promote progress" and not the power to "enable rent-seeking", which is basically what intellectual property laws have been perverted into by private individuals seeking to increase their short term gains.

US Intellectual Property Law is a prime example of the tragedy of the commons.

Which would you rather have? Under which situation would you and 99% of all U.S. Citizens be better off: (1) the right to the exclusive income on something you have made for your entire life and part of the life of your heirs and assigns or (2) the right to free, unfettered access to every intellectual good created prior to 2004 that isn't a trade secret?

Under which of those two scenarios would more "progress in Science and the useful Arts" occur?

I don't know about you, but when I have kids, I would prefer that they inherit a large commons than rights to income from the works I have created.

P.S. To directly answer your question. What I believe about that doesn't matter. What does matter is that the laws in this country be enacted with the sole purpose of maximizing Science and the useful Arts that we all have free and open access to. If it is necessary to permit someone to temporarily restrict access to an intellectual good to provide financial incentive to a creator to create a work in the first place then that achieves the goals of the U.S. Constitution. How much restriction and for how long, should be the absolute minimum necessary to make sure the innovation happens at all.

99.9+% of all rational actors would not going to be dissuaded from creating by a copyright policy that only lasts the original 7 years. Every time copyright has been extended, it has been extended by people who have already profited handsomely off their intellectual good to the prior X years (where X is the copyright term at the time) and would like to extend that term so they can continue to earn rent. The terms would probably never have been extended otherwise, since the lawyers and lobbyists necessary to argue for the copyright extension in Congress don't come cheap.

There is nothing preventing people from selling their goods with DRM. The problem with DRM is that it makes a good less convenient for a buyer and drives the buyer to other goods or illegitimate copies. The most expensive cost for a creator is the copy left unsold.