BeautybyGod wrote:
you guys make some great points.

it was a sad day for many of us when the DMCA law was passed. you know it was passed by a bunch of idiots who didn't really have a clue about what the internet was like. some people told legislators that they should not include those who facilitate theft accountable because it would limit the internet... and they bought it.

i disagree strongly, though, that image/content theft can't be limited or stopped. as was pointed out, the way the law is too much leniency is given to hosting and sharing sites. sites like limewire, aimster, and mp3.com were shut down. of course it would take the cooperation of many countries. countries like the netherlands are profiting on a large scale by not doing much of anything about copyright infringements.

so now you have huge sites like tumblr profiting from using our images. for many of these sites, their business model doesn't work without allowing rampant theft. the same goes for ebay. the laws have put the burden on the copyright holder to find violations and work to get the stuff taken down. so the owners become millionaires at our expense.

if tumblr was letting people post songs on there, they'd be in a heap of trouble. but we photographers are treated like second class citizens.

as was stated, drm isn't the answer.

When we use terms like "theft" we're still speaking to the old paradigm with its clear boundaries, and deceiving ourselves that nothing has changed. It really has changed. The very fundamental nature of the internet makes it difficult to call most (if not all) its users "thieves". Transfer is by definition the very backbone of http. It's not a "theft" protocol. Is it fair to pretend that we built something to encourage the rapid dissemination of information to multiple users a platform for theft? It's much easier to change the business model than to change the technology. True, the open nature of the technology is forcing open the closed nature of our business models and that seems unfair in some ways. But the technology is not nefarious, it is not changing our fundamental behavior as consumers into thieves. It is changing our fundamental notions of space - public/private, social/commercial, and who has what rights within it.

AVD AlphaDuctions wrote:

except someone did already many times and it did not take off. It only worked within its own niche(s).  Creators being afforded their 'natural rights' is all fine and good but you need to have the other side of the equation.  people jump through hoops when they have to but have an annoying habit of routing around hoops just as the internet was designed to route around 'damage'.
Go ahead and start your own VPN. Or start  your own alternative or enhanced domain system and build DRM in.  Or go buy out one of the existing ones. It won't be an expensive venture because you won't need to build out a lot of infrastructure to meet the demand.  So it's easy to do. Go for it and let us know how it turns out.

You write, " Creators being afforded their 'natural rights' is all fine and good but you need to have the other side of the equation. "

What's the other side of the equation?  "Creators *not* being afforded their 'natural rights?"

And why should only creators be subject to "*not* being afforded their 'natural rights?""

Lumigraphics wrote:
The problem before that was, DRM doesn't serve the customer. Apple has been successful by making it all about the customer.

It can do. Sometimes, you go on holiday, and only want to rent a car for a week, instead of buying one. You benefit from the reduced hire change for limited use.

Similarly, DRM allows increased consumer choice by tiering subscription methods, so that people who want incomplete access to a copyright work can pay less to license it than someone who wants complete access to it.

Martin Bielecki wrote:

When we use terms like "theft" we're still speaking to the old paradigm with its clear boundaries, and deceiving ourselves that nothing has changed. It really has changed. The very fundamental nature of the internet makes it difficult to call most (if not all) its users "thieves". Transfer is by definition the very backbone of http. It's not a "theft" protocol. Is it fair to pretend that we built something to encourage the rapid dissemination of information to multiple users a platform for theft? It's much easier to change the business model than to change the technology. True, the open nature of the technology is forcing open the closed nature of our business models and that seems unfair in some ways. But the technology is not nefarious, it is not changing our fundamental behavior as consumers into thieves. It is changing our fundamental notions of space - public/private, social/commercial, and who has what rights within it.

So what you are saying is that Natural Rights are changeable and varying, sometimes hip and in, and at other times, out and unhip.

HJM Photography wrote:
You write, " Creators being afforded their 'natural rights' is all fine and good but you need to have the other side of the equation. "

What's the other side of the equation?  "Creators *not* being afforded their 'natural rights?"

And why should only creators be subject to "*not* being afforded their 'natural rights?""

If you are going to talk about natural rights, you need to justify where these natural rights come from, why they exist, and why we ought to respect them, in way which is more persuasive than merely saying "They're from God" or "We've always had them".

Rights exist because in the long run, society is better off for having them. That's all there is to it.

David-Thomas wrote:

It can do. Sometimes, you go on holiday, and only want to rent a car for a week, instead of buying one. You benefit from the reduced hire change for limited use.

Similarly, DRM allows increased consumer choice by tiering subscription methods, so that people who want incomplete access to a copyright work can pay less to license it than someone who wants complete access to it.

Apple actually uses very strict DRM on their own software running the iPhone iPad.  The do not want people hacking/sharing/copying it, but again, we all know by now that while corporations have Natural Rights, artists, creators, and people do not.

David-Thomas wrote:
If you are going to talk about natural rights, you need to justify where these natural rights come from, why they exist, and why we ought to respect them, in way which is more persuasive than merely saying "They're from God" or "We've always had them".

Rights exist because in the long run, society is better off for having them. That's all there is to it.

so I take it you're not a big fan of Locke, nor Jefferson, nor Homer, nor Moses, nor Western classics, nor the Declaration of Independence?    that's about par for the course.

HJM Photography wrote:

Apple actually uses very strict DRM on their own software running the iPhone iPad.  The do not want people hacking/sharing/copying it, but again, we all know by now that while corporations have Natural Rights, artists, creators, and people do not.

Your point escapes me.

David-Thomas wrote:

Your point escapes me.

naturally.

HJM Photography wrote:

naturally.

Are you being insulting intentionally, or can you just not help it?

HJM Photography wrote:

Apple actually uses very strict DRM on their own software running the iPhone iPad.  The do not want people hacking/sharing/copying it, but again, we all know by now that while corporations have Natural Rights, artists, creators, and people do not.

You do know that all the DRM that apple uses has been circumvented right?

HJM Photography wrote:

You write, " Creators being afforded their 'natural rights' is all fine and good but you need to have the other side of the equation. "

What's the other side of the equation?  "Creators *not* being afforded their 'natural rights?"

And why should only creators be subject to "*not* being afforded their 'natural rights?""

those rights were never absolute. there were many rights creators didn't have, like the right to control the subsequent sale of their work (first sale), nor was the scope of consumption ever clearly defined, except as the difference between public and private. Where in the past a publisher sold copies of work that could legally be consumed by an unknown multiple of people within a private domain, the electronic publisher demands to have that domain curtailed to one. But the technology makes it impossible.

HJM Photography wrote:

so I take it you're not a big fan of Locke, nor Jefferson, nor Homer, nor Moses, nor Western classics, nor the Declaration of Independence?    that's about par for the course.

Talking about natural rights is a lot like talking about God. It's a nice idea, but justifying their existence runs into problems - problems you've illustrated yourself - instead of justifying your argument, you just dropped names in a rather disappointing display of intellectual cowardice.

DanK Photography wrote:

You do know that all the DRM that apple uses has been circumvented right?

yah.

You do know that every law has been broken?

time to get rid of law!

David-Thomas wrote:

Talking about natural rights is a lot like talking about God. It's a nice idea, but justifying their existence runs into problems - problems you've illustrated yourself - instead of justifying your argument, you just dropped names in a rather disappointing display of intellectual cowardice.

OMG lol! I dropped names!

It's not the names that are significant, but their IDEAS!

Talking about natural rights is a lot like talking about God with socialists. It's a nice idea, but justifying their existence runs into problems with socialists - problems you've illustrated yourself - instead of justifying your argument with socialists, you just dropped IDEAS in a rather disappointing display of intellectual cowardice with socialists as all socialists know that all IDEAS are relative, and thus Jefferson, Moses, Homer, and Locke who loved IDEAS were all cowards. lol

HJM Photography wrote:
so I take it you're not a big fan of Locke,

By the way, I am. He suggested that when we mix our labour with the commons, we ought to get a share of the commons proportionate to our labour, provided that the commons are not depleted.

Locke, however, recognising that creative works build upon an existing body of work, recognised that a proportionate share of the commons equates to a limited share, and further, recognising the public domain is not immune to depletion was, like myself, in favour of limited copyright protection, not copyright protection which was expansive.

He no more suggested that a flash of creativity should allow a monopoly over subsequent incarnations of the resultant work than he did suggest that pulling some muck from the sea grants one a monopoly over the sea.

David-Thomas wrote:

By the way, I am. He suggested that when we mix our labour with the commons, we ought to get a share of the commons proportionate to our labour, provided that the commons are not depleted.

Locke, however, recognising that creative works build upon an existing body of work, recognised that a proportionate share of the commons equates to a limited share, and further, recognising the public domain is not immune to depletion was, like myself, in favour of limited copyright protection, not copyright protection which was expansive.

Mark Twain said it much better, but since Twain referenced the IDEAS in the Constitution and Bible, thusly "namedropping," you will likely call him a coward:

Here’s what Twain said:

http://blog.herosjourneyentrepreneurshi … y-and.html

“I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. I don’t like to be obliged to use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, “Thou shalt not steal,” but I am trying to use more polite language.
They always talk handsomely about the literature of the land… And in the midst of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it. – Mark Twain, Speech in Congress, 1906
MARK TWAIN ON COPYRIGHT”

HJM Photography wrote:

OMG lol! I dropped names!

It's not the names that are significant, but their IDEAS!

Talking about natural rights is a lot like talking about God with socialists. It's a nice idea, but justifying their existence runs into problems with socialists - problems you've illustrated yourself - instead of justifying your argument with socialists, you just dropped IDEAS in a rather disappointing display of intellectual cowardice with socialists as all socialists know that all IDEAS are relative, and thus Jefferson, Moses, Homer, and Locke who loved IDEAS were all cowards. lol

To paraphrase: "You commie bastards don't understand my genius"

I note that on your profile, you write:

HERO'S JOURNEY MYTHOLOGY PHOTOGRAPHY (TM)

What does (TM) mean?

Martin Bielecki wrote:
But the technology is not nefarious, it is not changing our fundamental behavior as consumers into thieves. It is changing our fundamental notions of space - public/private, social/commercial, and who has what rights within it.

i disagree... the fundamental notions you speak of are becoming that people can take whatever they want off the internet and do whatever they want with it.

that doesn't make it right.

i submit that it's only because the laws are so lax that some of those notions are changing for the worse. if there were no laws against car theft a lot of people would think it's ok, and there would be a lot more of it.

BeautybyGod wrote:

i disagree... the fundamental notions you speak of are becoming that people can take whatever they want off the internet and do whatever they want with it.

that doesn't make it right.

i submit that it's only because the laws are so lax that some of those notions are changing for the worse. if there were no laws against car theft a lot of people would think it's ok.

To argue the other side for a moment, think about a video cassette. You might loan it to friends, or invite friends over to watch it.

Emailing it to friends is really not that different, is it, especially since that with the communication revolution, peoples' networks of friends span continents.

David-Thomas wrote:

To argue the other side for a moment, think about a video cassette. You might loan it to friends, or invite friends over to watch it.

Emailing it to friends is really not that different, is it, especially since that with the communication revolution, peoples' networks of friends span continents.

there is some similarity, but when you email something, you are making a copy.

making a copy isn't a big deal (to me)... but when the copy is used for commercial purposes, or when someone profits from the sharing of it, that makes it a different story.

David-Thomas wrote:
To argue the other side for a moment, think about a video cassette. You might loan it to friends, or invite friends over to watch it.

Emailing it to friends is really not that different, is it, especially since that with the communication revolution, peoples' networks of friends span continents.

There is a vast and critical difference.  The act of loaning a physical copy does not create another copy.  Emailing a file creates another copy.

exartica wrote:

There is a vast and critical difference.  The act of loaning a physical copy does not create another copy.  Emailing a file creates another copy.

Well of course - the point I'm making is that whilst it's a technical difference, in practical terms, for the man on the street, there is no difference at all.

Question: You argue the web isn’t living up to its initial promise. How has the internet transformed our lives for the worse?

Jaron Lanier: The problem is not inherent in the Internet or the Web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.

Question: You say that we’ve devalued intellectual achievement. How?

Jaron Lanier: On one level, the Internet has become anti-intellectual because Web 2.0 collectivism has killed the individual voice. It is increasingly disheartening to write about any topic in depth these days, because people will only read what the first link from a search engine directs them to, and that will typically be the collective expression of the Wikipedia. Or, if the issue is contentious, people will congregate into partisan online bubbles in which their views are reinforced. I don’t think a collective voice can be effective for many topics, such as history--and neither can a partisan mob. Collectives have a power to distort history in a way that damages minority viewpoints and calcifies the art of interpretation. Only the quirkiness of considered individual expression can cut through the nonsense of mob--and that is the reason intellectual activity is important.

On another level, when someone does try to be expressive in a collective, Web 2.0 context, she must prioritize standing out from the crowd. To do anything else is to be invisible. Therefore, people become artificially caustic, flattering, or otherwise manipulative.

Web 2.0 adherents might respond to these objections by claiming that I have confused individual expression with intellectual achievement. This is where we find our greatest point of disagreement. I am amazed by the power of the collective to enthrall people to the point of blindness. Collectivists adore a computer operating system called LINUX, for instance, but it is really only one example of a descendant of a 1970s technology called UNIX. If it weren’t produced by a collective, there would be nothing remarkable about it at all.

Meanwhile, the truly remarkable designs that couldn’t have existed 30 years ago, like the iPhone, all come out of "closed" shops where individuals create something and polish it before it is released to the public. Collectivists confuse ideology with achievement.

Question: Why has the idea that "the content wants to be free" (and the unrelenting embrace of the concept) been such a setback? What dangers do you see this leading to?

Jaron Lanier: The original turn of phrase was "Information wants to be free." And the problem with that is that it anthropomorphizes information. Information doesn’t deserve to be free. It is an abstract tool; a useful fantasy, a nothing. It is nonexistent until and unless a person experiences it in a useful way. What we have done in the last decade is give information more rights than are given to people. If you express yourself on the internet, what you say will be copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed, and turned into bricks in someone else’s fortress to support an advertising scheme. However, the information, the abstraction, that represents you is protected within that fortress and is absolutely sacrosanct, the new holy of holies. You never see it and are not allowed to touch it. This is exactly the wrong set of values.

The idea that information is alive in its own right is a metaphysical claim made by people who hope to become immortal by being uploaded into a computer someday. It is part of what should be understood as a new religion. That might sound like an extreme claim, but go visit any computer science lab and you’ll find books about "the Singularity," which is the supposed future event when the blessed uploading is to take place. A weird cult in the world of technology has done damage to culture at large.

I gotta admit, the modern-day academy has been quite successful in convincing the general populace just how silly of an idea Natural Rights are.

David-Thomas wrote:
Well of course - the point I'm making is that whilst it's a technical difference, in practical terms, for the man on the street, there is no difference at all.

No.  It's not a "technical difference" at all.  It is very, very practical.  If I loan a video cassette to you (what century are we talking about?) I can't watch it while you have it.  If I copy a file and send it to you, we can both view it independently.  I don't have to get it back from you or buy another to view it again.

HJM Photography wrote:
I gotta admit, the modern-day academy has been quite successful in convincing the general populace just how silly of an idea Natural Rights are.

Clearly you are a staunch believer of natural rights over legal rights - you mark "HERO'S JOURNEY MYTHOLOGY PHOTOGRAPHY(TM)" on your page, but it's not a registered trademark in the USA.

Clearly it's a trademark under natural law, right?

HJM Photography wrote:
People, people,

The multi-billion-dollar corporations and billionaire masters of the cloud, who freely copy, index, and profit off your content and creations--all your blood, sweat, and tears--are the ones who are also funding all the hipster lawyers/MBAs/bloggers to tell you that:

1: DRM is dead
2: DRM is broken
3: DRM cannot work
4: DRM is immoral
5: DRM is evil
6: Property Rights for artists are dead
2: Property Rights for artists are  broken
3: Property Rights cannot work
4: Property Rights are  immoral
5: Property Rights are evil

not sure about the DRM part, but the rest is exactly right... because many of those billionaires couldn't make any money if they couldn't make people believe those things.

they profit, the content creators don't.

Monito -- Alan wrote:
I'm not overlooking it.  The OP is overlooking it.  The OP proposes replacing the internet and general purpose computer software (like picture viewers and browsers) and special purpose computer software (like Photoshop) with DRM software.

Please reread my post that you quoted.

thx... I was addressing the OP and not you. I must have hit quote instead of reply. Apologies.

Edit: post fixed

BeautybyGod wrote:

i disagree... the fundamental notions you speak of are becoming that people can take whatever they want off the internet and do whatever they want with it.

that doesn't make it right.

i submit that it's only because the laws are so lax that some of those notions are changing for the worse. if there were no laws against car theft a lot of people would think it's ok.

let me make this more concrete.

I can go to a newsstand and buy a copy of National Geographic. It is a copy I own and can do many things with. I can have it in my home where my family members, friends, and acquaintances can also view it. I can bring it with me to the office and let my coworkers browse it as well. I can decide to leave it in the office reception area where any number of people could look through it. Or I can sell it to someone else for half its cover price and they can look at it and subsequently sell it to someone else, ad infinitum. Not a single person except me contributed financially to the publisher, yet not a single one of us is considered a thief. Why? because viewing has not been considered stealing. With the exception of public performance and republishing, we have never been told that it's an infringement to allow access to information in our possession, within a private domain. This is true of tv, movies, books, music, etc.

The scope of private consumption was NEVER limited to the one person who paid for access. It was fairly easy to determine when a work was being broadcast or performed or published and those activities could be called infringing if the additional rights hadn't been secured. But we've always had the right to share in a private manner. What's changed isn't how we consume media, but the nature of the space in which we consume it. "MY" Facebook page is a place I connect with my friends, people I invite into my private domain. When I post a hypertext link to a photo from NatGeo it is much more like letting my friend flip through my magazine in my home than it is to stealing another copy of the magazine.

What's fundamentally changed is the trivial way in which it's possible for one person to share with literally every other person. The physical barrier has been removed and now publishers are faced with the reality that people are just doing what they've always done, they just aren't limited by physicality anymore.

This is at the heart of the issue - where should we redraw the reasonable limits of private versus public domain, given that we fundamentally consume a certain way, but the technology we use now is fundamentally built to pull in the direction of our interactions being public - to share with one is to share with all? Does it make publishers of us all and the solution is to say everyone must purchase every instance of consumption? Is that fundamentally fair?

Or does the solution lay somewhere between "we're all thieves" and "all information must be free"?

Martin Bielecki wrote:
let me make this more concrete.

I can go to a newsstand and buy a copy of National Geographic. It is a copy I own and can do many things with. I can have it in my home where my family members, friends, and acquaintances can also view it. I can bring it with me to the office and let my coworkers browse it as well. I can decide to leave it in the office reception area where any number of people could look through it. Or I can sell it to someone else for half its cover price and they can look at it and subsequently sell it to someone else, ad infinitum. Not a single person except me contributed financially to the publisher, yet not a single one of us is considered a thief. Why? because viewing has not been considered stealing. With the exception of public performance and republishing, we have never been told that it's an infringement to allow access to information in our possession, within a private domain. This is true of tv, movies, books, music, etc.

The scope of private consumption was NEVER limited to the one person who paid for access. It was fairly easy to determine when a work was being broadcast or performed or published and those activities could be called infringing if the additional rights hadn't been secured. But we've always had the right to share in a private manner. What's changed isn't how we consume media, but the nature of the space in which we consume it. "MY" Facebook page is a place I connect with my friends, people I invite into my private domain. When I post a hypertext link to a photo from NatGeo it is much more like letting my friend flip through my magazine in my home than it is to stealing another copy of the magazine.

What's fundamentally changed is the trivial way in which it's possible for one person to share with literally every other person. The physical barrier has been removed and now publishers are faced with the reality that people are just doing what they've always done, they just aren't limited by physicality anymore.

This is at the heart of the issue - where should we redraw the reasonable limits of private versus public domain, given that we fundamentally consume a certain way, but the technology we use now is fundamentally built to pull in the direction of our interactions being public - to share with one is to share with all? Does it make publishers of us all and the solution is to say everyone must purchase every instance of consumption? Is that fundamentally fair?

Or does the solution lay somewhere between "we're all thieves" and "all information must be free"?

The solution is quite simple--creator-centric DRM.

Let the artists and creators define the rights and usage, and let the people buy it if they want, or not, and use it in the way they agreed to when buying it.

The technology is there.  The only thing blocking it are the billionaire fanboyz multiplying their billions on the backs of the common creator, while funding and teaching hipsters/bloggers to snark and rage against property rights and natural rights, as they sip their lattes and make fun of Thomas Jefferson/Homer/Twain/Moses in their skinny jeans.

Martin Bielecki wrote:

let me make this more concrete.
...
"MY" Facebook page is a place I connect with my friends, people I invite into my private domain. When I post a hypertext link to a photo from NatGeo it is much more like letting my friend flip through my magazine in my home than it is to stealing another copy of the magazine.

There is a difference between posting a link to a photo on another site and posting the photo itself on your site.

Rebel Photo wrote:
Martin Bielecki , you sir, just don't get it!
1. Viewing is legal, no one is objecting to that.
2. Copying is not!

there, see how easy that was?

Actually, he's making a very insightful point. In contrast, you seemed bogged down in a 1980s paradigm, and are intent on re-iterating the status quo.

exartica wrote:
There is a difference between posting a link to a photo on another site and posting the photo itself on your site.

One must ask why hotlinking an image should be OK, but uploading the same image to imageshack and posting it should attract criminal penalties.

Sure, you can draw a distinction, but there isn't really a difference.

David-Thomas wrote:

Actually, he's making a very insightful point. In contrast, you seemed bogged down in a 1980s paradigm, and are intent on re-iterating the status quo.

Yah--because property rights and natural rights and Immutable Natural Law have all drastically changed since the 1980s and big-hair metal bands!

HJM Photography wrote:
The solution is quite simple--creator-centric DRM.  [...]  The only thing blocking it are the billionaire fanboyz multiplying their billions on the backs of the common creator, while funding and teaching hipsters/bloggers to snark and rage against property rights and natural rights, as they sip their lattes and make fun of Thomas Jefferson/Homer/Twain/Moses in their skinny jeans.

Repeating what you've said several times in this thread doesn't make it any truer.

Life is not as simple as particle physics.  There is no over-arching ultra-conspiracy of a few dozen billionaires pulling a few dozen strings.  Such simplistic populist theories should be left out to dry in the prairie dust of the Depression era that spawned them.