I see morality as an inherently transactional thing; a universal contract between all moral agents. Humans in a culture together have certain transactional norms that they can expect from each other--you don't murder me, I don't murder you--and it seems to work out. With animals, though, you can't work out the same kind of deal. Most of them would do the same to us as we do to them, given the opportunity. They can and will act savagely towards us, so we are free to act savagely towards them. There are some exceptions--we seem to have worked out a good arrangement with dogs, for instance.
> I think we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to higher standards than that of a wolf or cheetah.
We may or may not have that responsibility, but we certainly don't meet it. History shows that people are at least as vicious as any animal you can name. This is something one tends to forget between wars, or in a place untouched by war.
> Suffering is bad. The fact that it occurs in nature is irrelevant.
The fact that it occurs everywhere in nature is absolutely relevant. Consider the rules of civilized society -- for example, everyone has the right to the pursuit of happiness. Some pursue happiness by having a lot of children, more than the planet can support. The result is widespread disease, starvation and war (otherwise known as "retroactive abortion").
It seems the high standards we've set for ourselves can result in (is resulting in) an unimaginable disaster, one in which everyone exercises their innate freedom of expression.
But there is a solution -- education. The very thing governments fear the most.
> Some pursue happiness by having a lot of children, more than the planet can support.
Perhaps more than their country or their own income can support. But with current technology we can farm enough calories every year to keep every body well fed. (Of course, they are not distributed equally at the moment. But the sum comes out right. And we haven't even really started farming the oceans. We are still mostly hunter-gatherers there.)
> with current technology we can farm enough calories every year to keep every body well fed.
False. Food growth rate increases arithmetically, based on available land. Population growth increases exponentially, based on reproductive potential. They cannot be compared -- population always increases until starvation limits the process, as modeled by the logistic function:
>> Food growth rate increases arithmetically, based on available land. Population growth increases exponentially,
> Sources?
It's called "mathematics." Fields of corn don't spawn little offspring fields of corn on adjacent plots of land, but people do spawn little offspring people. The first is an arithmetic increase (as long as there is still arable land), but the second is exponential.
> Malthus made the same mistake, if I remember right.
Nonsense. He predicted something that hasn't happened yet. If a geologist predicts an earthquake with a probability of 50% within 30 years, and 35 years pass without an earthquake, does that make him wrong?
Flattr is great and they actually do have something along the lines of tracking down people who aren't part of the system. You can flattr Twitter accounts and they will create a 'pending click' for that account which will only be processed if the person tries to collect the money.
The main problem I can see with your system is the difficulty in finding the appropriate person or organization to pay for every single file that the union downloads.
If it actually took off, the person(s) running it could take the sort of fee that shops/etc would normally take (probably much less) to cover time, and then "Dear Record Label, I have a cheque for $$$$$ broken down for the following artists: do you want it?"
I think the biggest problem would be convincing people to do it - right now you can get it free (or a slight fee from some download services) illegally or paid legally... how many people are going to chose the brand new third option of paid yet still illegal?
edit:
Perhaps a more viable idea would be to do the same thing, but rather than having the aim as trying to win over the likes of the RIAA/etc. just try and win over artists. The Louis CK is now pretty well known, but he had to make that decision before finding out its success. What if anybody who downloaded anything could go through a service that would give money to the artists, without legally admitting to any wrongdoing?
For example, I download a Justin Bieber album, or a Ricky Gervais stand-up DVD, go onto this site and say "here's £5 because I think the DVD/album/whatever is cool", and that money then goes directly to the artist - without me ever having to say that I actually downloaded it illegally, that's just left as an assumed fact.
Of course this becomes harder on the administration side, and much harder when it's something like a big film where you pretty much have to go through the studio or you'd never be able to split money between everyone involved. And, thinking about it, I guess even for individual singers/standups/etc, there's still the issue that not everybody who makes money from a CD without being the artist falls into the moneygrabbing category. Do sound mixers, studio techs, etc etc etc etc not deserve a cut?
Anyway, just babbling on... would love to see someone give this a real shot, but really no idea if it could have even the tiniest chance of success.
> Agreed, sadly, none in the filesharing camp has offered anything even remotely resembling morality. You tend to see something along the lines of "I'm not talking about morality, I'm just giving you reality etc" (followed by "want some of my cash? dance, bitch!").
How about this? Without copyright we could make the collective cultural works of mankind instantly accessible to every internet-connected person in the world, all the time, for free. Every book, every film, every recording. Would this be a good thing or do you think we should shutdown libraries as well?
If you think I'm being hyperbolic read-up on Google Books and Google Library. It's depressing the damage these laws have already done.
Well I agree with you. It's a tragedy that the overwhelming majority of good video ever recorded can't be found on video streaming sites because of copyright and can't be found through torrents because torrents are only really good at keeping popular content alive.
What we need to do is popularise something like I2P or GNUnet and make it accessible to regular users. Then it can form the platform for the next generation of culture-sharing websites.
Mickey Mouse and John Coltrane are widely and continuously available because people enjoy them. If their copyrights expired tomorrow there would still be plenty of Coltrane MP3s and torrents out there a year from now. However try playing Coltrane in your restaurant without paying a license or try uploading Steamboat Willy to youtube to show the world this strange old cartoon you found. Then you'll discover that people are prevented from enjoying these works because companies are using copyright to remove them.
Whatever this alternative business model looks like it needs to be legally possible for me to watch any movie, listen to any song or read any book I like for free. Alternatively, people will find illegal ways to do this. They'll share files over this internet or bring their harddrives round to each others houses. Inevitably, the only way to effectively stop people doing this will be to ban private communication and have DRM required on all our hardware. Otherwise piracy will still be possible.
I'm all for rewarding artists to encourage them to create more work, but I'd rather it be impossible to finance big-budget cinema then have the kind of dystopia that would be required to enforce copyright law.
I hear you - and I do think the kind of distribution you picture is clearly where we are going to end up. It just takes time: time for hard-liners to retire, time for a hugely complicated distribution system to rationalize itself. But we will get there - and I think it'll be a great thing for all the arts.
Now, about it being 'impossible to finance big-budget cinema': the elimination of copyrights would hardly have that effect - it would actually make it easier to finance Hollywood movies because the cost of licensing works on which films are based would become zero. In the case of a film like Lord of the Rings - the estate's deal was for 7.5% of GROSS. Take those kinds of costs out and you get a much cheaper film to make.
As for a dystopia being required to enforce copyright law: all that is required to enforce copyright law is for the law to be aligned with the marketplace. In any such case, that means the law is infrequently or inconsequentially transgressed; it isn't the law that is feared it is the enforcement.
As I stated before, the law and the marketplace need to get together. When they do, it'll be a fine thing and won't require crazy DRM or a dystopia.
You mentioned "reasonable safeguards" but I don't see how any legal safeguards can be both reasonable and effective - If they're able to stop me from sending someone a copyrighted file then they're necessarily able to monitor and control every channel of digital communication that's available to me. I don't think we'll actually end up with crazy DRM and a dystopia It's just that that's the logical conclusion of the industry and government's current approach. Until we take a stand against this things will get worse before they get better.
When the law is aligned with the market people will choose to pay for things. The only safeguard content producers will have is people's sense of reciprocity. This transition will take time but its a transition that can and should be supported by people in the tech startup space.
Suffering is bad. The fact that it occurs in nature is irrelevant.