Swedish File-Sharers File For Religious Status 420
nloop writes "A group of file-sharers in Sweden have requested that their religion, Kopimism, be officially recognized in Sweden. Although this status has been denied once in the past the struggle for religious freedom from persecution continues. Aside from deeming CTRL+C CTRL+V as sacred symbols other beliefs include the flow of information being ethically right and closed source software being 'akin to slavery.'"
Heretics! (Score:5, Funny)
All who follow the mighty Jobs know that the only proper religious symbols are cmd-c, cmd-v
Re:Heretics! (Score:5, Funny)
All who follow the mighty Jobs know that the only proper religious symbols are cmd-c, cmd-v
Why such harsh language? No, they're not heretics. Just a few of our brothers and sisters - OK, a few of our brothers - who've been led astray. We may disagree with them, but we can keep this disagreement civil. Hearken to the words of Mr. T: yea, we do not hate the fool; we pity the fool.
No, we must reserve our hatred for the vile, damnable, iniquitous cult of the yy and the p.
Re:Heretics! (Score:5, Insightful)
All who follow the mighty Jobs know that the only proper religious symbols are cmd-c, cmd-v
All who are true practitioners remember the arcane incantations ctrl+ins and ctrl+shift+ins...
Beware younglings, for ctrl+c or cmd+c may invoke the dark ones, who will promptly unleash their wrath and cancel your program depending on the gracious terminal that surrounds and gives meaning to your actions... At all times we must be mindful of the terminal, for it is the source of all, it permeates and binds our actions into reality.
When in full presence of the holy terminal you must tread lightly and always remember to show your respect by donning the venerable shift key's cloak of distinction when you utter either form of the standard incantations, lest you interrupt the dark one's slumber.
Only a false prophet claims there is but one true way. Only a fool believes such lies -- There are many paths to a single place depending on your origin.
Also note that the good enjoy a hearty embrace -- Be wary of those that when greeted with a friendly grasp of hand, later claim you have held them wrongly.
Re:Heretics! (Score:4, Funny)
And I wasted my mod points on crazy comments in the "regret" story. Now I know what regret is.
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I'm an orthodox Kopimist. I believe Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert are the proper path. Some of my friends belong to the reformed church and use the right click menu, but I believe their ignorance of church doctrine is somewhat unsettling.
This has gone too far (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This has gone too far (Score:5, Insightful)
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In what way does it do that? By pointing out the ridiculous exceptions we give to religion? Sorry, but this is more ridiculous than the "church of filet mingon" which was formed by prisoners in an attempt to force prison administrators to provide them with free steak. As for a commentary on Intellectual Property, I fail how it does anything at all.
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I don't see any difference between the motivations of one who would join the "Church of Filet Mingon" and any other religion (say, Christianity).
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But it won't make a point. All it will do is reinforce the belief that file-sharers are greedy kids who think they should be above consequences.
Do you really think that even a single person, upon hearing of "Kopimism" and its holy shortcut keys will think "Gee, they have a point!"?
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I did.
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Unfortunately, ms is a religion that's yet to produce a saint.
Dave Cutler?
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You're giving the free entertainment crowd a lot more credit than they deserve. Is that the natural Slashdottian tendency to believe Europeans can't be stupid, greedy, venal people?
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Hypocrites (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I also suspect that members of this sect will cry foul when for instance some of their GPL'd code is found to be plagierized and used in another program.
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Yeah, I guess that's why comedians don't tell jokes any more.
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So fucking what?
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"If content producers know that anything they produce is "up for grabs", what incentive do they have to keep producing?"
Honestly...for love of what they do. Most writers never get published. Most bands never achieve fame. So many original ideas for movies go unmade. These same content distributors block a large amount of content from ever getting to us. Even so, people STILL create. They write, they play, they act, they dream. Even when they KNOW for a 100% fact they will never become rich, famous or widely
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You're assuming that great creative works (even collaborative ones) require investors. I disagree.
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Money may not be a motivator, but it's an enabler of creative work.
Simply because it affords the creator time to create.
If they didn't get money for their creations, they'd have to make money some other way and have less time to create whatever they do.
Re:This has gone too far (Score:5, Insightful)
You probably already are, I'm writing software for a living...
So yes, I do feel the pain of copyright infringement. But given the way copyright and IP laws are today, even I, someone benefiting from them, think they go too far.
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> If content producers know that anything they produce is "up for grabs", what incentive do they have to keep producing?
Right, because money is the _only_ incentive for people to create. /sarcasm.
Why don't you actually talk to people who create in their spare time. The ability of the human soul to express itself is driven by more then purely capitalistic greed. Apparently this paradigm is a foreign concept to you.
> To read summaries like this you get the sense there isn't any value to intellectual p
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Why don't you actually talk to people who create in their spare time. The ability of the human soul to express itself is driven by more then purely capitalistic greed. Apparently this paradigm is a foreign concept to you.
So tell me, how many great works are done by people who do these things in their spare time? How many great artists, filmmakers, singers, actors, etc would we even know about if they couldn't make a living doing it full-time? When people can make good money from creative works, then they can focus on those works and continue to make them. Yes, we have some crappy "creative" works out there, but there are also some very good ones from folks who do it not just because they love it, but because it can suppor
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What a trite, mealy-mouthed platitude. Will you be the first to swear a vow of poverty and do without money or any other standard of exchange for goods & services? Or will you be one of the autocrats who "volunteers" to administer the system out of the goodness of your heart?
You think it's that sim
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First, Ayn Rand supported intellectual property.
Second, Libertarians believe a lot of crazy things, so I don't think it's much of a criticism to say "libertarianism disagrees with it". Just the other day, I read an article by a libertarian arguing that drunk driving should be legalized. If you think I'm making that up, then here you go: http://mises.org/daily/2343 [mises.org]
Why be such morons? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not the way to get the ethos behind file-sharing taken seriously. It's counter-productive and childish.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
And me without mod points, too.
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Re:Why be such morons? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Master's theology student and active church member, I agree. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with church tax breaks. Sure, it's nice, and maybe if there's rules for secular non-profits I wouldn't mind incorporating in that sense, but for governments to specifically say "you're a religious organization, you get tax breaks" is to say as well that "you're _not_ a religious organization, you get no tax breaks." You can't read a lot of religious history without getting nervous about governments deciding what is and isn't a religion.
As an unrelated aside, the same kind of argument is why I dislike legal protection of "traditional" marriage.
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Where do secular non-profits not get tax breaks? IN every country I know of, there is some kind of registered charity system that gives all kinds of organisations with tax breaks.
Re:Why be such morons? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not the way to get the ethos behind file-sharing taken seriously. It's counter-productive and childish.
It is, however, if they're successful, a way to enjoy the same legal protections granted to a number of other ethoses (ethoi?) which are demonstrably more counter-productive and childish than any amount of file-sharing could ever be. Which I kind of suspect is the point. "We don't care if you agree with us, just stop persecuting us" is a demand which has proven quite effective, in the civilized world, for all sorts of beliefs which previously been considered bizarre at best and criminal at worst.
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it works fairly well for Pastafarianism. Why not here?
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No. It's funny. Which means people like it. The power of comedy can be enormous. Ask Jon Stewart. It's a perfectly valid way of raising awareness, and using that awareness to create change.
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Yeah, except they're not laughing with you, they're laughing AT you.
Just like most people snicker and roll their eyes when Jon Stewart (or a similar show) does a "feature" on the Jedi "religion". It's not because they think it's such clever societal commentary, it's because they think these people are loons who are completely disconnected from the real world.
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Story of Beginning in this religion (Score:5, Informative)
Don't miss out on Member of European Parliament Christian Engström's suggestion for a religious version of the Beginning [google.com] for this religion.
Short version:
1. There was chaos and soup.
2. Somebody in the soup learned to copy. Thus was Life.
3. Having learned to copy, they built magnificent things.
4. We honor the beginning by copying and building magnificent things.
Not bad, I think.
Re:Story of Beginning in this religion (Score:4, Funny)
Makes more sense than scientology ;)
Re:Story of Beginning in this religion (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh please, 90% of the people who copy things haven't built anything, much less something that could be described as magnificent.
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Re:Story of Beginning in this religion (Score:5, Insightful)
100% of people who build things, copy things.
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Actually, less than 0.01% of any building or construction is wholly original. Most have zero original content. The rest just COPIES what others have done before, from components to styles, methods and design. Bricks are nothing but copies of 'the master brick' invented by someone a long time ago. Walls are built of bricks using methods and designs copied from those invented by others a long time ago. Same with roofs, windows, doors and so on. EVERYTHING is done as copies (partial or in full) of things done
my religion protects me as well (Score:2)
it supports selling heroin to teenage runaways (this is how the god judge\). robbing convenience stores(money is the root of all evil, it must be liberated from non-believers). etc.
Computer religion from Sweden? (Score:2)
If anything, the hex key should be the symbol of their religion.
Also, their bible should come in a kit that you must assemble yourself to prove you are worthy.
Maybe they should get it... (Score:3)
They seem as whacked out as any of the religious freaks out there...
Not "winning". (Score:4, Informative)
You are free to believe in copying and preach about it all you want, but if you break the law, you will still get cuffed and jailed.
A cult may believe in human sacrifice or slavery or under-aged marriage or the execution of homosexuals. Thank god (or gov to be more accurate) it has never given them the right to do it.
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or giving alcohol to minors...
Oh wait, I guess if you believe in transubstantiation it's not wine, but blood, so that's ok.
Carry on.
Re:Not "winning". (Score:4, Insightful)
You are free to believe in copying and preach about it all you want, but if you break the law, you will still get cuffed and jailed.
A cult may believe in human sacrifice or slavery or under-aged marriage or the execution of homosexuals. Thank god (or gov to be more accurate) it has never given them the right to do it.
Then why can churches discriminate in ways that would get any other business or organization in huge trouble? Let's see, how many female priests does your church have? Have they fired priests for coming out as homosexuals? Think that is legal?
Religion is not a 'get out of jail free' card (Score:5, Informative)
Something being part of your religion does not necessarily make it not illegal. In the USA, the standard used would be the Lemon test [wikipedia.org]. If file sharing was criminal-illegal (rather than civil law illegal) and the 'church' challenged this on first amendment grounds, the state would need to show:
1 the law had a secular legislative purpose
2 the law's primary effect is not to advance or inhibit religion
3 the must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion
An anti file sharing law would have no trouble passing these tests.
Of course, this is all in Sweden, so different laws/precedent will apply.
Sharing is what made us human (Score:3)
Yesterday, I downloaded and watched a national geographic show on "ape genius." It was primarily focused on the chimpanzee but also made comparative mention of the bonobo and human toddlers and a few other apes as well.
What it was showing was that there are many, many things that the apes have in common with humans but then asked the question (the real topic of the video) "what is the thing that let us explode intellectually while the other apes did not?" They can learn and do all sorts of things so why not?
Turns out, they lack an instinct for teaching and learning. We have that, and they do not. And teaching and learning is all about sharing -- information sharing. Without it, we would be at the same level as the other apes.
So what are the copyright people doing? Putting a price and making it a crime to exercise our very instincts -- instincts which pre-date modern humanity.
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Wait, how is desiring to collect more entertainment than could ever be consumed in a human lifetime without compensating the creators not a form of personal greed?
Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Interesting)
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So most of the western world is pretty fucked then
Yes, pretty much.
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Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Insightful)
The main failure of the Western world is believing that you're not engaged in abuse of your fellow man just because you outsource poor treatment of workers which you would find unacceptable (and illegal) in your own country.
If WTO wanted to live up to its ostensible aims, it would equalise the playing field across countries by requiring broadly equal worker treatment across countries engaged in free trade. In fact, all it has produced is a careful concoction of newspeak and slave management.
Re:Them swedes. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Depends what you're outsourcing.
Software development can be cheaper but often isn't.
Sewing cheap clothes is clearly significantly cheaper.
Many manufacturing activities are a lot cheaper.
Is it unfair? Yes, I get to buy a t-shirt for around ten minutes wages, and the shop I bought it from gets a 40% markup on it too. Meanwhile the person making it can't afford a computer..
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If the only thing that prevents the collapse of the Western World is protection of intellectual property, then be sure to have a good bug-out location.
Maybe I'm just too jaded, but relying on intellectual property that can be copied digitally, perfectly within a few seconds is probably not the most sustainable basis for an economy.
When all you have is something that can be multiplied a millionfold within a few hours, you're hosed. Sorry to break it to you, but it's true.
Of course we can make laws and enforc
Re:Them swedes. (Score:5, Insightful)
You refer to this question:
I guarantee it has been answered in the past ten years. You have just not been paying attention. But I will answer it again.
Having free access to more oxygen than can be consumed in a human lifetime is not considered personal greed. Why not? Because the good is abundant. Same for data. Once it exists, it is even more abundant than oxygen. It can be duplicated endlessly without costing anyone anything. Therefore, performing such replication is not greedy.
If my copy of it prevented you from having a copy of it, then grabbing up more than I need would be greed. Since that isn't the case, the word greed does not apply.
There you go, answered. You might disagree (and you would be wrong) but you can no longer claim that it hasn't been answered.
Re:Them swedes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Having free access to more oxygen than can be consumed in a human lifetime is not considered personal greed. Why not? Because the good is abundant. Same for data. Once it exists, it is even more abundant than oxygen. It can be duplicated endlessly without costing anyone anything. Therefore, performing such replication is not greedy.
Movies aren't like oxygen. If people don't pay to watch them the businesses that make movies will do something else instead. Talking about the costs of making a copy (zero) and neglecting the cost of making the original movie (hundreds of millions of dollars) completely misses the point that the reason people are willing to invest money in making movies is because they expect to get that money back and more from selling the right to see it. If everyone pirated it rather than paying to see it there would be no reason to invest money in making future movies. Thus movies would not get made.
So the people that pirate are reducing the chance of future movies from being made by reducing the profits on the ones that exist. They are a bit like customers that go to a restaurant and eat their fill but don't pay - in the long run they will force the restaurant out of business. That could easily be described as greedy by other non free loading patrons. Not to mention by the owner.
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Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Informative)
copying data deprives no one of anything
What about the person/group/corporation that originally created the data? Do you think it costs no money or time to make a movie? Do they just push a button and the Automatic Movie Generator Machine System spits one out? Well that machine cost them money, too. And what about the people who built that machine. That took years of R&D.
There really is no scenario in which piracy does not deprive somebody of something. Sure, you're copying data rather than taking it, but that's why there's something called "licensing". It costs money to produce entertainment media and licensing is how you recoup your investment.
(Does this mean I agree with how the **AA are handling things? No. They're a bunch of assholes that need to be shot. But that doesn't mean piracy isn't depriving them of money. And that doesn't make Kopimism or whateverthefuck any less stupid.)
Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Insightful)
There really is no scenario in which piracy does not deprive somebody of something.
Oh please, not this one again.
If you want n dollars for a movie, I have n * 0.1 dollars and I instead copy the movie, have I deprived you of n dollars? Had I offered you 0.1 * n dollars you would've spit in my face...
What if I copy your movie as an alternative to not watching it at all?
These are both perfectly reasonable and likely situations.
Re:Them swedes. (Score:5, Interesting)
You folks always talk about the cost of producing movies/books/music, as if it were of any relevance to the debate. The cost of producing anything is an economic risk that lies squarely with the producer. Whether you are recording an album or manufacturing a car is irrelevant. What we should be talking about is the value of things. People pay significant premiums to have an Adidas logo on their running pants or a BMW sign on their car. The retail prices of both the pants and the car have very little to do with the cost of producing either but everything to do with how much people are willing to pay for having them, ie.: their value.
Apparently the perception of media's value has changed over the last decades. Where the producers - or more to the point: the distributors - see the value stable or even going up, the consumers see it going down. Way down. Films, music, books have become a commodity. IMDb gives 4,579 films released in 1970 and 20,578 in 2010. Those numbers may not be completely representative but they do get the point across: There is so much media competing with each other that the value of individual works has decreased. Add to that the vastly reduced cost of reproduction and you end up with a product which is seen as almost worthless by its supposed consumers.
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What if I copy your movie as an alternative to not watching it at all?
Then don't watch it. The movie studios don't make money from you watching their movie, they make money from you BUYING their movie.
Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want n dollars for a movie, I have n * 0.1 dollars and I instead copy the movie, have I deprived you of n dollars?
Yes you have. You (as an average person) might have bought the movie at a later point in time when you did have n dollars.
Statistically, some people will actually save up money in order to buy the movie so, statistically, you ARE depriving them of money. Not n dollars but rather n * chance_of_somebody_saving_up_money_and_buying_it_later dollars.
Now it could be that you as an individual simply don't want to save up money in order to buy something. But if that is the case, then we're discussing moral values, not economics.
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Yes you have. You (as an average person) might have bought the movie at a later point in time when you did have n dollars.
No, as you yourself wrote, I MIGHT end up buying the movie later on. This is an uncertainty and neither you nor I can say how likely it is that this person would later have purchased the movie.
And while you try to twist it into "it's all about economics" the truth is that morality is also a part of this, if I feel a movie isn't worth my money but I have a choice between pirating that movie and watching paint dry I may still choose to pirate and watch the movie. You may consider this inherently wrong but I j
Re:Them swedes. (Score:5, Insightful)
There really is no scenario in which piracy does not deprive somebody of something.
Oh please, not this one again.
If you want n dollars for a movie, I have n * 0.1 dollars and I instead copy the movie, have I deprived you of n dollars? Had I offered you 0.1 * n dollars you would've spit in my face...
What if I copy your movie as an alternative to not watching it at all?
These are both perfectly reasonable and likely situations.
Not THIS argument again. People downloading movies aren't too poor to pay to watch them. They're just too cheap to pay to watch them. If something costs n dollars, and you have n*0.1 dollars, either wait until it costs less or you've saved more. It's easy to say "I wouldn't have bought it anyway," when you plan from the start to download it rather than buying it.
Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Informative)
he reason people are willing to invest money in making movies is because they expect to get that money back and more from selling the right to see it
They don't make money and haven't for the longest time yet they still keep making movies so obviously they aren't doing it to make money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting#Examples [wikipedia.org]
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People still want films that haven't been made yet. So, in a world where you can't get people to pay for something after it's been made, pay will occur, mostly, before, rather than after production - which is how it used to be with music and theater.
Think "Kickstarter" was known producers and directors: if enough fans want something, they pay five or ten dollars and it goes into an escrow account until the film is made. If it stinks, the reputation-capital of the people involved drops and they have trouble
Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Funny)
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"So the people that pirate are reducing the chance of future movies from being made by reducing the profits on the ones that exist."
I can live with Tom Cruise only getting 50,000$ per movie.
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Two points:
1) movies are not necessary for life, nor are they naturally-occurring phenomena in nature;
2) Greed has to do with an outsize desire for something; It doesn't require that you wanting (or taking) lots of it create a scarcity for someone else;
If you desire vast quantities of something which requires time, effort, and investment by other people to create, then yes, that is greed. The cost of duplication is a fractional amount of the value of the time and effort that went into creating it. And
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So, in your view, musicians, authors, software developers, movie and TV creators are just like trees - who neither desire payment, nor have a need to buy food or shelter? Maybe if my grocery store didn't require payment for food, my local auto-dealer would just give me free cars, and my mortgage company would just forgive my mortgage then I could afford to make software for your person
Re:Them swedes. (Score:4, Interesting)
How about said authors do the right thing: Just /stop/. If you're not making money off of it, and you need said money, stop making things! Maby we'll end up with /less/ crappy movies and formula fiction. The only thing that would be left is A, things that were done for free /just because/, and B, stuff that relies on other buisness models(Like advertising - you don't pay to watch it). You might even see crowdsourced stuff: Pay upfront and everyone gets it. /lot/ less corporate parasitism.
Sure, you wouldn't have many 100m+ budget movies... but do you need it? People will figure out ways to do things cheaper, and you'd have a
I suspect we'd see a lot less crap, an overall reduction in total volume, and a better signal-to-noise ratio. And that's a good thing.
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So, in your view, musicians, authors, software developers, movie and TV creators are just like trees - who neither desire payment, nor have a need to buy food or shelter?
No, but if you keep making up enough lies, maybe some day you'll get one right, even if only by accident.
Out of curiosity, what do you do, and what do you think of people who think you shouldn't be paid for doing it?
I'm not some idiot "creator" who creates things no one wants then complains no one buys it. I am an "employee." That's where I show up when they tell me to and they send me money. "Creators" who want that also get to do that. It's called a "job." Or just create works that are commissioned.
Why do artists want to get paid forever for something they did once long long ago? And you call us freeloaders
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Wait, how is desiring to collect more entertainment than could ever be consumed in a human lifetime without compensating the creators not a form of personal greed?
You've seriously never had a single answer to this in ten years?
It's not greed based for an archivist, a genre-fan, a generous person, anyone annoyed at the concept of missing Shakespeare plays, people who want different files but who want to help seed for others, people studying a subject or era, someone collecting media for a group trip, anyone making a time capsule,...
In a digital world where having more is having more chances to share, having more is good, not greedy. No hoarding or denying of access is
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because the way copyright is being massively, willfully infringed is a violation of the social contract.
No, thats just how the world works and always has been working. Before the Internet people would lend books to friends, record stuff from TV or radio and so on. Copying and lending stuff has always been done without the copyright holder consent, it wasn't even illegal most countries. The thing that changed with the Internet is that you can now lend your stuff to the whole world at once. Its not the behaver of sharing that has changed, but the underlying technology that makes it a lot easier.
And while the en
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And a song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw [youtube.com]
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Better version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSkCny-HtTw [youtube.com]
Re:What do they share? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The way Hollywood's been remaking Scandinavian and Swedish films [newsweek.com] you could argue they're just taking back what's theirs :-)
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The Greeks and Romans did that one quite some time ago.
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