[MrBuddyCasino]

Exactly. People are just good at rationalizing their behaviour. I don't judge anybody who uses such sites, but what really pisses me off are the guys who like to shout some self-aggrandizing bullshit about fighting for freedom etc. Theres a basic lack of empathy.

[api]

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. I can't see any way to stop this stuff short of stopping everything else, but it irks me that we make heroes out of jerks who are basically just operating plagiarist click-mills. KimDotCom falls into the same category. These people are on a lower tier than scummy domain squatters and spammers.

Want to lionize someone as a freedom fighter? Try someone like Linus Torvalds, or Daniel J. Bernstein, ... someone who ... I dunno ... did actual work of their own to advance the cause of freedom?

My other point is this:

People seem to have this idea that piracy is a rebellious act, that you're hitting back at "the man." I just don't see it. To me it looks more like union busting against the artists... destroying their revenue model so as to beggar them and make them willing to take anything for their work. This in turn benefits the upcoming generation of data-aggregation capitalists who want to monetize everyone's work and use it to sell ads and push surveillanceware. You're scoring one for the man, not against him.

[dil8]

I disagree...

Sharing has been part humanity since the dawn of the human race. It is just easier to share things with more people now.

[api]

That's a variant of "information wants to be free," which is an argument from the naturalistic fallacy.

The question isn't "what's natural" or "what's easy." It's "what benefits the human condition?"

Do we want a culture where artists can make careers out of creating great art, or do we want a culture where there's no money in that so it doesn't get done by anyone except trust fund kids and people who are willing to take a vow of extreme poverty?

In most societies since the dawn of the human race, 99.9% have lived in hardscrabble poverty while <0.1% own virtually everything. Seems to me that the culture of "free" is -- a bit ironically -- taking us back there by destroying all revenue streams except those based on winner-take-all mass content aggregation. It might be the path of least resistance and it might be "natural," but it is not desirable.

[shkkmo]

I don't think that copyright (or patents) are the only way (or even a good way) to allow creative professionals to have lucrative careers. Copyright may be "what's easy" but it isn't what is right and it's only been around for a relatively short cultural time period during which is hasn't been particularly successful in supporting artists who weren't "picked" by the gatekeepers (publishers, record labels, etc).

Enforcing copyright pits the artist against their audience and limits the access of impoverished people to our cultural commons. Relying on copyright (ownership of information) to provide revenue steams tends to benefit that 0.1% (owners), not the 99.9%.

We are in the process creating new ways to reward artists for their work.

Non-attribution is an entirely different beast from piracy. Passing someone's work off as your own is despicable. Sharing someone's work, with their name attached, should be lauded.

[mordocai]

You seem to think there are only two options: Piracy and artists living in poverty, or no piracy and artists not living in poverty.

Personally, how I want things to be is that authors freely release their content and still make a nice living. That's not necessarily natural and certainly not easy but you asked how I want things to be.

[api]

That'd be wonderful. Find a way to make that happen and you'll be rich and famous.

In any case, people who make money on the backs of other peoples' work explicitly against their will are still assholes.

[xorcist]

I think it's pretty clear from the 20th century that stronger copyright laws doesn't benefit the human condition in general.

The copyright holders did anything to limit access to copyrighted material, just to make it unnecessarily scarce. (Except in the cases where the copyright holder is the actual artist.)

One of Lessig's points is that piracy made Hollywood possible.

[dil8]

I agree that we need an alternative where the artists can make a living and do their art, but I think trying to stop people doing what they feel is natural is not going to work.

To me it's very similar to the war on drugs... Policy and business models need to change. There are always people resistant to change as they want to protect their revenue streams.