[virtual_void]

There is no singular conception of The Social Contract, nor indeed of morality.

You’re making a point about how you feel about it without presenting an argument.

The discussion of harms or lack of harm from piracy has been raging for a long time. It’s not going to be solved by appealing to the idea of right and wrong. It’s not universal in this instance which is why the argument continues.

You would have a point if everyone agrees it is wrong but some people do it anyway. However, that is not the case.

[WendyTheWillow]

It’s extremely well understood that the social contract covers “don’t lie to get stuff”, which is what pirates do to obtain the copy they then make available, as the social contract presumes those engaged in a sale of a copy of a work won’t turn around and give it away for free.

Pirates are thus “free riders” to the social contract.

[Voultapher]

Based on all the comments you left in this thread, I'm not sure you really want to engage this topic earnestly.

I think you are making the mistake of applying social contracts that can work well on a person to person level to person vs corporation situations. With the latter, one party has way more leverage than the other. On top of that corporations have proven again and again that they will mislead, lie to you and abuse you to the extent permissible by law, or even more if they think it's lucrative to so. On a person to person level that would be a very toxic relationship. They certainly didn't uphold classical inter-personal social contracts, so why should you?

Genuine question, did you fully read the article before commenting here?

[WendyTheWillow]

I not only read the article, but I am familiar with Doctorow’s positions on this issue, and am fairly well versed in ethics.

The problem here is probably that most folks can’t separate what “is” and what “ought” to be. For example you’re discussing how corporations behave despite it being wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not piracy is immoral. The argument is one of “oughts” and you’re trying to talk in terms of “is”, despite the gaping crevasse separating the two of them (Hume's Guillotine).

This isn’t where ethics is ambiguous or debated; it’s very obviously immoral to pirate, for a whole host of reasons, some of which I’ve already mentioned. From there you surely can concoct scenarios where a baby would die if it doesn’t hear a Metallica album or whatever, but the general point will stand.

[Voultapher]

I see your point. Based on your earlier replies it was not clear to me you were talking about the abstract concept in an unrealistic world. Might help to make that more clear.

In some kind of perfect world there would be no need for violence. Yet we live in a complex and ambiguous world, where the widely accepted moral view that killing is a bad thing is sometimes the "right" thing to do. Or would you argue the Ukrainian people should just roll over because the social contract says killing is bad? My point is, I don't see how the notion that piracy is bad in a world we don't live in helps this discussion. To me it feels more like an argument one could use to demand people stop doing this immoral thing now.

[WendyTheWillow]

No, what? This is not about an ideal world, it’s about what ought to be in this one. Murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, and piracy is wrong, same kind of thinking (though hopefully it is obvious that one is worse than the other).

[colinsane]

my friend had some old Cowboy Bebop DVDs he got from a garage sale way back. i bought them off him, and then visited a 2nd friend's place to rip them using her DVD reader, and having done so showed the series to a 3rd friend group next time i visited them. it was a hit, and after i left one of the friends wanted to watch the bonus features. so i gave him access to the FTP server i keep all my media on and he copied it off there.

by the law as media companies would wish us to understand it, this is piracy. but when and by whom was a contract broken during this chain of events? i shared the content with my friend, but my purchase of the DVD wasn't conditional upon any agreement not to, so it couldn't have been me who broke a contract. was the contract broken by the person at the garage sale who sold the DVD without verifying that the recipient wouldn't pass it on to another recipient who would then duplicate it? if so, doesn't that same logic imply the DVD manufacturer broke a contract? if this is how you imagine the contract to function, it would seem the existence of piracy _anywhere_ in this chain means that the entire industry is criminal.

this isn't a hypothetical, btw. there actually is a Bebop DVD out there with a chain of custody that complex (actually more complex by now).

[tsimionescu]

There is a clear expectation in law for at least 100-200 years now that owning a copy of a piece of media doesn't allow you to copy or perform it. This is by no means a new concept, and you broke the social contract the moment you copied the DVD. This may not be printed on every book and DVD, but it is very clear - you own the physical copy, not the text.

There are other gray areas related to property and copyright. This is not one of them.

[colinsane]

sure, i can identify the moment in this chain when copyright law may have been violated. it's the contract part i'm caught up with though: law is a thing which exists whether i agree to it or not, but contracts are agreements opted into. and i can't identify any moment where i reneged on any agreement, implied (the friend i bought that DVD from knew me well enough to understand what that meant) or otherwise.

[atq2119]

Your dates are off by more than a century though. Initial copyright terms were barely more than a decade. Cowboy Bebop would have been fair game.

[tsimionescu]

Duration of copyright is separate from the principle. The current durations of copyright are obviously crazy. But that doesn't mean we should just do away with copyright entirely.

[virtual_void]

Your argument is based on the terms of a conceptual social contract which is ill defined and not universal.

You seem convinced that your system of values are the same set everyone else has. That doesn’t make for a useful argument.

[WendyTheWillow]

It’s actually very important that we agree on the structure of the social contract, and this is not “my” system at all, but a description of the system we both rely on to not get stabbed in the street for our lunch money.

[Jochim]

There's nothing social about intellectual property law. It's been shaped by and to the benefit of corporations who would have us paying royalties to the descendants of the man who "invented" the wheel if they had their way.

It goes entirely against how humans think, strangling creativity and innovation. An artist is harmed far more when they're forced to spend years in court, debating whether their chord progression is too similar to a song written by someone who's been dead for 50 years.

[WendyTheWillow]

Couldn’t disagree more; IP is the only way we could have found to properly compensate creators for the value of their work. To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.

[etaweb]

Intellectual property is not all about arts and extends beyond it.

> To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.

Art is older than intellectual property.

"To throw out intellectual property" wouldn't stop anybody to continue making art, it would at most challenge the way we build an economy around it.

[Capricorn2481]

Are you aware the earth is older than the last few centuries? How can you even make a claim like this with a straight face? Copyright is rather new, art is ancient. Corporate meddling doesn't help the small indie artists, it boots them out of theaters to fill seats for avengers 7

[ubercow13]

https://youtu.be/PJSTFzhs1O4

[justinclift]

Hmmm, how much real world exposure to art do you actually have?

Have you ever actually published anything for others to purchase?

[monkeywork]

>IP is the only way we could have found to properly compensate creators for the value of their work. To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.

Umm you do realize that some of the greatest works of art were created LONG before "IP" was a thing right? The patronage system did pretty well....

[virtual_void]

Are you are relying on that terminology because you believe piracy to actually be stealing? Depriving a person of something they already own.

[WendyTheWillow]

Nope, stealing involves depravation.

[virtual_void]

Then which specific thing in your conception of the social contact are you equating piracy with?

The post states that piracy isn’t stealing and you agree.

There must be some other thing in your mind that is equivalent.

[Tryk]

I don't know what working definition of social contract you are using but classically the social contract is a set of rules between individuals and a state. Crucially whenever these rules change, e.g when DRM modifies the idea of ownership to a weak form of lending, the individuals are entitled to diverge from the contract.

[WendyTheWillow]

No, the social contract is a philosophical concept where people agree implicitly to behave a certain way in order to maximize the value of interaction. Part of that involves consenting to governance, but that is merely one aspect of the social contract.

[cuu508]

It seems to me the media companies are violating the social contract here, and the "pirates" are merely working around that issue.

[WendyTheWillow]

If so, that'd be vigilante justice and still immoral.

[MerManMaid]

Since the assumption is that "the media broke the terms of the social contract" wouldn't my obligation to follow their terms be suspended? (Much like our social contract not to physically harm one another can be suspended while they are actively trying to physically harm you)

>If so, that'd be vigilante justice and still immoral.

Also I don't want to get to off topic, but I want to challenge your premise that vigilante justice is always immoral. (Is it immoral for a parent to punish a child for jaywalking instead of calling the police?)