Ok, I’m not really one to rag on everyone’s religion, that’s their choice and whatnot, but some are just… how can I put this delicately… stupid! And Kopimism is right up there!
Let me explain… Kopimism is a “religion” that was recently recognized, officially, by the Swedish government. It holds information as holy and the act of copying a holy act. That’s… about it right there. No matter how much polish you try to put on it, this turd is still about the illegal download and distribution of copyrighted media. The only thing different they’re doing, than say Pirate Bay or some download club, is that they decided to be an affront to all real religions. Sure, I’m sure we can get into arguments about that, but the nitty gritty about this is that a group of people want to download their mp3s and they figured they can skirt the law by saying they are protected by freedom of religious expression. Of course, you still can’t break the law… I mean, you can’t have human sacrifices; still against the law, fyi.
I guess the real question here is not only should they have been allowed to get this far with things, but is there such a huge underlying problem to guide people to behave this way? Here’s the entire piracy argument in a nutshell…
On the one hand, you have people who make stuff, like actors, producers, camera people, sound people, writers, etc… They all have jobs and want to be paid. Had the digital age not happened, and assuming you couldn’t just duplicate commercial products like with vhs, then the equivalent would be walking out of a store with a stack of dvds under your coat. That, of course, would be theivery and such.
On the other… This isn’t the same kind of copyright violations as say someone making a Mickey Mouse cartoon without consent of Disney. And supporters say it’s also not a crime of theft. No physical goods have been absconded with and then there’s the kicker; no money has been lost. That’s the big problem there, since all of the movie/music/game industries have claimed they’ve lost money, but when you ask those who download, many will say if there were no other means, then they would not have purchased the media in the first place. So, nothing has been lost since it was never a potential purchase.
Both sides have good points and while you have many new rules, regulations, and borderline unethical attempts to circumvent piracy on the media itself, at least we have had so many great and inspirational ideas spring from the whole thing. Look at stuff like how bittorrent works and how most of your games now update and install using that technology. Or the compression standards we use for disk media that was used to compress movies to fit on cds. Or even the MP3! Yeah, sure, maybe they weren’t all originally intended for piracy, but because they became so widespread and popular, they’ve transitioned better to commercial media. Heck, just look at Microsoft! Even Bill Gates stated that piracy of their software has aided their market penetration and, in the end, given it a larger market share had it not been distributed. And just look at Steam, a company that seems to have a great handle on the distribution of its products, and dangit, I just love Steam!
Well, what do you guys think?
Source: Escapist
That is funnier than that Scientology crap. It’s also the reason I’ll stay agnostic even after some would-be deity smacks me upside the head and says, “I EXIST.” “Grats, dude. Was I suppose to do something with that info?”
Stealing is stealing is stealing. If it wasn’t paid for, and would otherwise cost money, you’re doing wrong.
The only gray area I can think of is CD’s, legitimately owning one and loaning it to a friend to listen to, and they burn a copy. At least I paid for it, and the artists didn’t completely lose out.
Then if some friend gives you a cd with music on it, how can you be sure it wasn’t stolen, and by using it you are enabling theft?
As for those clowns, by refusing to pay for things and claiming religion as their reason, they are effectively forcing their (BS) religion down other people’s throats. I know nothing about Swedish laws, but if protection of religious prosecution is how they are trying to do this, it may be how they can be stopped. By attempting to force others to follow their religious laws, they can be accused with such and protection can be extended to those trying to sell from these thieves. Meaning they can only get things free from businesses owned by practitioners of the same, which the income they would get (none) would not support such a business.
Hopefully some of that ramble at the end made sense.
see, I guess that’s where things get chincy… like, if you buy a cd then loan it to someone, that’s okish. if you buy a cd then sell it, that’s okish. but if you buy a game and sell it, that’s wrong. if you buy a game and loan it to your friend, also wrong. seems the game corps are a bit bigger of a stickler than even the music folks!
yeah, the religious thing isn’t going to protect them… still can’t break the law, but it’s just a matter of time before someone gets into trouble and pulls the “persecution” card.
The problem, as I see it, is that we insist on sticking to a mindset and a society based on greed for physical goods. A physical item has limited number of simultaneous users and the use of it can also be guarded by the person currently using/owning it. An idea (or song, image or any other non physical item) have unlimited amount of simultaneous users since it’s easy to copy and share it, and it therefore gets difficult to dictate the use of it. The only way to keep control over an idea is to never ever show or tell it to any other person (*). The very second I share an idea (or song, or image or whatever) which I’ve created, I’ve also lost control over it since other persons can fork it and improve it however they want to.
One part of the problem is that there are people who think that they can have 100% control an idea after it’s released. Sure, a control can be maintained to some degree, but to think that one is the one and only owner of an idea is ridiculous. Another part of the problem is that there are people who insist on only regarding immediate payment as an income, failing to realize that it’s the long-term income that brings the big cash (**).
As long as we insist on thinking inside the box, we will hold the development of our society back. If we do not share ideas more freely, copying will continue to be a subject for debates and that there will continue to be movements, like Kopimism, which tries to circumvent the current rules in favour of what they believe to be a better future (***).
Footnotes to the text above, can be skipped if it’s too long to read
(*) To never tell anyone else about an idea one just came up with is not a guarantee for 100% control, someone else might produce a similar idea independently.
(**) An analogy to file sharing as well as a real life story that happened to me on my vacation last year: My girlfriend and I rented a pair of sun beds on the beach. The owner of the sun beds also had a bar nearby, but didn’t sell any snacks we fancied. Since he didn’t offer anything we wanted, we shopped some snacks at a nearby mini-mart instead. When we were back at the sun beds with the snack, the owner explained to us that he would only allow people to eat snacks that he sold; snacks brought from other places was not allowed to be eaten while renting his sun beds. The reason, as he explained, was that he would lose money if no one shopped snacks from him (“if I allow one person to eat snacks that I’ve not sold, then everyone will buy snacks elsewhere and bring here”). I do understand his side of the argument, he wants to earn money. The problem was just this: since he didn’t offer anything we wanted, he couldn’t lose anything from allowing us to bring our own snacks (we wouldn’t shop snacks from him anyway). The argument that everybody would bring snacks is only based on greed and not from reality – as long as he offers snacks that people would want to buy, there will be some guests that buy snacks from him. As it ended, we thought he was to rude to continue to rent from; for the rest of the week we rented sun beds a few meters further along the beach from another bar (which allowed us to bring snacks). In basics – by considering that he lost money from not selling snacks to us (ca 2€), he ended up losing rent from the sun beds from us for the rest of the vacation (ca 80€) plus the money for the drinks we would have ordered to the snacks. In addition, a few of the guests nearby that heard him tell us to not bring snacks decided to not go to him any more either.
(***) I haven’t commented on Kopimism in itself, I haven’t read enough about their ideas to tell if they really are trying to improve the way we think or if they simply wish to obtain stuff without contributing to society. What I mean is simply that there are better ways to run our society; we just have to allow change to happen (if our current system were perfect, there wouldn’t be any people trying to break free from it).
lol, we’ve gone to footnotes now! XD
ya know, I’d love to say (as an artist) that once you make something, it becomes the property of the people… but without those copyrights, not only does it hurt the little guy trying to get off the ramen diet, but dissuade creation of new things. why bother making a movie if people are just going to steal it and never give you a cent?
however, it’s probably not that extreme and I think there’s a few cleaver solutions out there that could greatly benefit both sides. lets look at the whole itunes thing, cheap music and movies for a buck? that’s a great deal! and especially if you can get it quickly and legitimately, there’s no reason to download it illegally when it’s that cheap.
or look at the subscription things like netflix, awesome idea for movie exchanges, but I think the next step for that is to be completely digital.
and then there’s online streams! I wouldn’t mind commercials in my movies/tv shows when watching them online! but don’t give us the half donkey “3 random episodes from 5 seasons back” crap… that’s not solving anything. networks should put up full seasons with ad-laden pages to pay the bills. that would massively curb the whole downloading thing.
anyways… that’s my view on it… kinda went of on a rant there… >)
** that’s a good analogy, I like that!
Well, you’re right in that they’re not actually a ‘real’ religion. From what I’ve read, several years back an MPAA lawyer dismissed a group advocating file-sharing as “It’s just a few people, very loud. They’re a cult. They call themselves Kopimists.” That lead to Sunde considering the idea and realizing that religious groups get far more legal protection than political groups do. (I’m willing to bet that the chance to raise awareness of the pros of file-sharing, which don’t often make the news, was also a factor.) As for whether it will turn into a real religion or not? Who knows. It certainly wouldn’t be the first religion based off of something illegal, nor the first whose creators were in it for other than spiritual reasons.
Personally, given the huge drive currently against ANY type of sharing, re-mixing, or anything not using outdated distribution methods, I say power to Kopimism! We need a middle ground, we need people to come up with legal alternatives to theft using the technology we currently have (For example, Megaupload says they’re currently working on a new online distribution method called Megabox that cuts out quite a bit of the middleman, and yes, they DO pay the artist and at a considerably higher percentage than they would have made the traditional way.), and we really need some voices opposing the slow whittling away at our online rights, especially the ones having nothing at all to do with file-sharing. If it takes starting a religion to bring public attention to the other side of the story, I can work with that.
somewhere all these people need to meet up and get things settled. just look at what’s coming from this: SOPA!! if we all don’t find some way of working it out, the gov will just swoop down and police everything… and not in the good Andy Griffith kinda way…
Nivella, I thought it made sense. And agreed with.
Wintermute, I also agree with you… To a point. But only To a point. As an artist (mediocre as I may be) what I do isn’t about money but about it being a part of myself. What I write, draw, etc… That’s a part of my being. I’m not sharing it for money but at the same time, it’s part of ME not this other person who May be trying to use it for Their personal gain without giving me so much as a nod for my part in it. You’re right in that it’s a lot about greed. But as you can say that it’s cool that they open the gates and make a social stand against greed, it’s a slippery slope between making the world less about greed and making it More greedy by lining ones Own pockets. The same argument about them having the freedom to do this is the same one that may end up lynching them in the end.
It’s only Freeing so long as They Themselves do not practice in the greed they claim to be defying. Again, like you, I don’t know If that’s the case, but I would guess at least Some of the “followers” of this religion are Not pure of heart which will end up corrupting any good intent the original religion had.
[grumbles rubbing temples] Grey areas make my head ache.
As to it being holy to copy things… [sighs]
All they have to do is point to the monks copying and translating the bible as a supposedly valid example of what they claim. Without the copies of the bible made, christianity would not have gained as much of the footing that it did.
My personal stand point on that is… Well, I’m not a true believer of the whole “the bible was written by god” thing. If it was, why would the byline of each of the books change? But that’s something Totally off-topic and need never be brought up beyond this moment as it does have some rather nasty bite-backs.
The point is that from the Kopimism stand-point, they already Have validation for their basic premise in basic christianity.
Whether it’s Right ethically or morally or Not… [shrugs]
I’m the last person one should ask that question.
There are no grey areas! Everything is either bad, super bad, not that bad or kinda good!
Okay i might exagerating a little bit, but i never actually believed the whole “shades of grey” crap. I prefer the “a necesary evil” and ” Doing nothing is also evil” philosophies.
heh, true… I’m trying to make a living off all this webcomic business… if my digital books or whatevers get stolen and distributed, it would be a pretty big blow to my ramen supplies. heck, even if someone started posting my comics on their site without my consent, it could have a huge impact.
but something tells me that it’s probably not the same kind of equivalent.
Lol, Silly… you sure you don’t work for BioWare?
Video game torrenting is ethically interesting. Because the creative minds behind video games usually don’t get any of the profits beyond their salary, perhaps a bonus, but that’s it. The specific sales only affect the guy sitting in his office making assloads, the CEO type that everyone seems to hate recently. Same with all computer programs, really. Where does everyone stand on that?
this here is also true… those paid up front, by contract, or on salary aren’t exactly losing out in this. and it’s probably not very common for producers/distributors to give “per sales” commissions to their staff (hell, not even the cast of The Simpsons could get that!)… so who is getting hurt the most? looking at the pie chart, it would be the distributors, the ones making the cd/dvds and trying with every fiber of their being to make sure you don’t get a version of that for anything cheaper than full day 1 sales price.
it’s kind of easy to hate the distributors, but I’m sure there’s quite a few little guys in their empire that get squashed pretty bad by pirating. kinda like the janitorial staff on the death star…
I fall into the category of Dont Care. what is it of my concern that some pirates have found the age old excuse of “its my religion”? Same thing has been done for Drugs. A religion started in Jamaica stating that marijuana is the holy symbol that connects us to god, and why not piracy? To tread on thin ice, but to summarize my ramble, Religion was always started to have some excuse, whether it for your fear of the end of death, or to get some more cash (Scientology) all religion comes down to the same base.
hmm… wonder how hard it would be to start the unified religion of playing video games, watching tv, and eating cold pizza all day…
>)
I have 2 different views about Piracy. First is my cheap side saying ” Why you pay twice as much for that thing when you can get it cheaper ! ”
And the second side ” Well you must respect the effort put into this game. ”
Lately though my two sides merged and brought the ” Respect the games that deserves…and bury the games with all-hype and no fun ”
The biggest example of the second part is Duke Nukem… It was the most idiotic price I ever payed for a game of that caliber…and by caliber I mean bad REALLY BAD …
After that, I detest the games that come out with soo much hype, that you feel like they cut out half of the game just to make more commercials and adds.
Soo yes, I support and respect certain games but I won’t pay full price for the games I probably wouldn’t play anyways. And if I buy the pirate game and like it, I can always buy the full version with the DLCs and perks.
You can say ” you are stealing from the developers” all you want but when you feel screwed over some over-priced games with developers who only care about making quick bucks instead of quality games, you understand that we are not sheeps and if they won’t learn from this, we will not stand for it.
With the late SOPA ( the copyright thingy ) companies wants to ”block” piracy by punishing the customers because they can’t buy their 10th Villa in South America or so. I have to say that these kind of movements only come out of Greed. They don’t care if we respect their product as long as we pay full.
To summarize, I don’t support piracy but as long as companies look at their customers as money-cows to be sowed, well I think they deserve what they get.
and that brings us to the “gamers vs publishers” fisticuffs we’ve had for the last decade, with people like EA at the forefront of the war.
see, demand should drive price. also, there should be an “expectation of value” for the product. for instance, you pay more for a steak in a fancy restaurant because you feel like the value is greater for the higher quality of food. but with games, it’s always $60! and there are some totally trash games out there that just about insult their players with that price tag. now, you can say “oh, lets wait for it to go down” which might take months if not years. or you can say “lets buy used” to which EA will kick you in your knickers! this whole DLC locking and whatnot is a terrible offense to the used game market, especially for things that are not priced correctly to begin with.
there are a lot of games I’m willing to pay full price for (ahem, Skyrim) because dangit, they’re awesome. but then there are many, mostly in the bargin bin of EB/GameStop(spot?) for $14 or less, that are over priced even at that level. now, I don’t mind paying $14 for a used game that’s not really that great, but don’t remove content as a punishment for me not buying it for full retail. that only pushes people into piracy. I’m thinking this DLC thing did much more harm in the long run than it did good.
Cant say about video games, as Ive never pirated any.
I know i do movies, and its a multi pronged argument as to why:
A) the ticket is $10. The actors get 1% of box office take. So shorting the A list a dime when they get 6 million or more per flick? Yeah, no sympathy there.
The company gets 20%. $2 from their opening day 15-20 million? All the pirates together arent even a significant rounding error in their figures.
And add to that that Hollywood is the living embodiment of the 1%er attitude we’re supposed to be opposing right now, and my “:give a damn” drops even more.
Also, I consider it a “test drive”. Hollywood makes so much crap, I want to see it first to see if its worth the $10 investment. If so, Ill buy a ticket and see it again in theaters. If not, then I dont have to fight the theater for a refund.
What I find most interesting is that rarely are small artists like you the victim of piracy on the types of sites I frequent. We have our own code, like Robin Hood, and most of us only pirate from those that can afford to lose, or over-charge idiotically for mediocre product (or text books :P )
Other than that, the distributors insistance that we turn everything into a rental, rather than actually BUYING our property is offensive to me. If Im paying, its mine to do with as I please. I can keep it, sell it, or give it away as I see fit. And I resent the idea that the seller has the “right” to dictate what I do with a product I BOUGHT with my money.
lol, that sums it up pretty well!
and you do bring up an excellent point. what exactly is the contract you enter into when purchasing an item? if I purchase a tacky lamp from the store, I have the right to sell it or give it to any other party I so choose. what about things like a cook book? I make a delicious mean and someone asks for the recipe… is it illegal to share it? so lets bring this back home with movies/music/games… if I purchase, do I not have the right to resell it? what about giving it to another person? I buy a cd, I listen to it, give it to someone else… seems legit? (at this point, game companies say NO and label you the devil for doing so) then we get intangible with things… say you buy it and make a copy for a friend. is that different from handing him the disk? and on down the line you get to the point of mass copying/distributing/”regifting” to where we’re at now with the standoff between the internet and copyright holders.
there’s probably some technicalities I’ve been a bit liberal with, but you get my point.
Forget the question of legality for a moment. Is it immoral to download something if the publisher / artist /distributor releases a work, but does not make it available for purchase where you live? After all, if you aren’t ABLE to buy it, you’re hardly costing them a sale they would otherwise make, are you?
that may be something you’d need to get permission from the artist first, but then again, it ultimately falls into how international IP laws are written and enforced. “technically” int. IP says no, too bad. but the reality is there’s no good way to enforce all of that.
anyways, in some circumstances it’s ok… for instance, there was this awesome band from spain that let some of us download their cd because there was no good way for any of us to get it (it was a small online community linked by a movie). I’ve tried to buy cds from them since and had trouble until they showed up on itunes a few years back.
then there’s the whole “fansub” community that takes foreign movies (mostly anime stuff) that are not yet released here in the US and subtitle them for free distribution online. one argument is that it doesn’t interfere with the market cause it was never there in the first place. supposedly they live by the code “subtitle and distribute by fans UNTIL it is licensed by a domestic company”. not sure if that whole fansub thing is still around or how it’s holding up, but back in the day it was the bees’ knees’!!