Capitalism is definitely a major issue. I just don’t see how someone should not be compensated for work they perform, this includes art. Art can be free, but it shouldn’t have to be free. I think we may be saying similar things here.

It is 100% correct. There was no concept of owning a story or a song just because you told it first, throughout literally all of history until the copyright laws of the 20th century.

And my point is that the literal entirety of human culture is based on a tradition of storytelling, something copyright expressly forbids.

Copyright is not a system that aligns with our natural inclinations or the way we evolved. It's a crude, child like attempt to cram information into a capitalist mold that doesn't work.

There was no concept of owning a story or a song just because you told it first, throughout literally all of history until the copyright laws of the 20th century.

Brother, copyright has been around since at least the 1700s, you're literally just making things up right now. Read a book.

Filesharing isn't piracy. It's filesharing.

Piracy is when you attack a ship and steal its cargo.

But, of course, it was difficult for the RIAA to have a war on sharing, so they had to use a different term with sinister connotations and implant it into the public consciousness.

And it worked! You never hear anybody talk about "filesharing" anymore.

The copyright holder is only actually harmed if I would have paid them otherwise. Since I never would have paid for the movie nothing changes for them.
Nothing is stollen because they would have no idea someone had a copy unless they check.

There's always the exceptions, but they're rare, and getting more rare.

The vast majority of works are owned by a few major corporations, even smaller, more indie games often get published through a major studio, which then retains a good amount of the profit. Almost all media, TV and movies, is owned by one of a handful of companies. Music is largely the same.

It goes the same way for so many other things too. It's not just games and media.

There are always going to be exceptions but on the whole, it's vastly more likely/common that the people profiting from something is a large, faceless organization, which only answers to their shareholders.

Oh, wow. I'm so impressed.

It's existed since the time of the transatlantic slave trade.

Surely that makes it something human and good!

Totally compares to the previous 2.75 Million years of story telling culture and tradition. Totally not just an exploitative artifact of the corporate age. /S

And go ahead and cite your favourite book on copyright. Maybe I'll read it.

Your argument so far has been "it's new (even though it's not) and I don't like it". If you wanna get extra pedantic, the idea of copyright has been floated since the 1500s, and the concept of owning art predates even that. It wasn't until the late 1700s that our current "modern" copyright system began taking form.

Regardless, none of that changes the fact that it's still a real part of our lives now. We don't live 2.75 million years in the past, we live now. Presumably, you wipe after defecating, don't you? Didn't you know that toilet paper is a modern invention that we didn't have a million years ago and only went to market 3 years before slavery was abolished in the US? It's bad and we shouldn't use it, right???

I still don't get what any of this has to do with anything we're talking about, though. I feel like maybe you've talked yourself into a corner by making up nonsense and then trying to defend it. This is dumb, just like every argument defending piracy; it uses sovereign citizen logic where you make up arbitrary rules and definitions that nobody else in society agrees with to justify bad behavior.

If you wanna pirate stuff, then pirate it. But just own it; don't make up silly defenses for why it's okay, because they don't hold up under scrutiny.

I've only been pointing out that copyright is dumb, not that piracy is wholly justified.

We got into this corner because you ignored the actual points I made about why copyright is dumb (read: a scarcity based system is not suitable for digital information since it is inherently unscarce)
and focused on the age of copyright instead.

Your other points amounted to little more than "I own my computer, therefore I'm entitled to your computer", and "free and not-free are the same thing", which are both equally absurd and not really worth dissecting further.

I thought perhaps you had an actual opinion on the matter that you've actually like... thought about, and not a reactionary one that seems like it was made up on the spot.

which are both equally absurd and not really worth dissecting further.

Try having a conversation without resorting to thought terminating cliches.

And if that's what you took out of it you missed the point. And given the number of dismissive thought terminating cliches you keep using it does not seem like you actually care to learn or are having a good faith discussion.

If you are, you've missed the point, which is that information, at a fundamental, physics level, does not behave the same way as energy and matter. Computers make it essentially free to replicate information infinitely. That is not true for any physical good. The differences therein mean that information should be abundant, except that copyright and DRM create artificial scarcity where there is no need for it.

Lmao imagine siding with corporations stealing creators in the first place.

Guess what, your money goes directly to investors who did fuck all. It doesn't pay the people who actually created art

That's exactly what happens.

Of course the genocide voter is also a corposimp

information should be abundant

Perhaps so, but isn't that up to whoever creates the information? If you invent a story, why would you not be entitled to own it?

For much of human history, artistry of all sorts has been a profession, as much as a hobby. The idea of attribution and ownership over one's art has been a core part of why that has worked and allowed creators to thrive. I would argue that the alternative of having no such system at all would ultimately lead to less art and information being created and shared at all, if the creation process is unsustainable at an individual creator's level.

Agree!

If you want to pirate content, go ahead pirate it. But don't act like you're doing something morally right or some other mental gymnastics to tell yourself you're allowed to pirate content. The truth is, you're doing something illegal. If you're okay with that, then by all means go ahead, but don't tell yourself or others that it is somehow not illegal, because it is.

Perhaps so, but isn't that up to whoever creates the information?

No, what I'm saying is that at a fundamental physics level, information is inherently abundant in a way that nothing else made of matter or energy is. There is effectively zero cost to replicating it an infinite amount of times. That is fundamentally not true for anything made of energy or matter.

If you invent a story, why would you not be entitled to own it?

Why would you "own" it? If you tell a story what prevents me from also telling that story? The threat of you punching me if I tell my own copy when you're not around? That's not owning something that's unilaterally declaring that you own all copies of something and forever own all copies of it going forward. If I invent a white t shirt, should I be able to claim ownership of every white t-shirt that anyone makes forever? That's nonsense.

For much of human history, artistry of all sorts has been a profession, as much as a hobby. The idea of attribution and ownership over one's art has been a core part of why that has worked and allowed creators to thrive.

Completely and utterly wrong.

Because no, the idea of ownership of a song has virtually never been important to art. Professional artists, in the time periods where they have existed, have largely been able to because they would be constantly performing art in the era prior to recordings, and they would constantly be performing other people's songs that they did not write themselves or they would add their own twists to it.

A song like House of the Rising Sun can be traced all the way back to 16th century English hymns before eventually winding it's way through countless Appalachian and travelling singers, before being picked up by 50s era folk musicians, before being picked up by a British rock band called the Animals. This is how music has worked through literally all of human history until the abomination that is copyright.

Hell it wasn't until the classical music era, and the rise of sheet music that you actually started seeing real authorship granted to individual people, and even in that era you didn't own a song, if someone like Mozart could listen and transcribe it then they could also perform it themselves.

I would argue that the alternative of having no such system at all would ultimately lead to less art and information being created and shared at all, if the creation process is unsustainable at an individual creator's level.

Yeah, well it's a good thing there are lots of alternatives to copyright that aren't 'no system at all'.