Justification for piracy

2 comments which say an awful lot; from slashdot story in which someone in the USA is fined $80,000 per song for copying 24 songs illegally.

As a side note, I've heard that in the UK it is not legal to copy a CD you have bought to your mp3 player in order to listen to it; copyright law was established before the means to replicate and distribute were available to the public - or indeed the desire or need to do so for private use (like copy to your mp3 player). It seems unfair therefore that copyright law is rigorously interpreted is this the context of today.

Also note; I am not justifying piracy but noting someone else's comments:

Re:Justifying piracy
(Score:5, Informative)

by hairyfeet (841228) <`bassbeast1968' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday June 18, @08:28PM (#28383463)

One sentence- Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright! The man has been pushing up the daisies (or sitting in the freezer, whichever you
prefer) for over half a fricking century, yet his FIRST work, one made when planes were made out of cloth and antibiotics were just a dream, is STILL under copyright.

Most of us here are for fair copyright.

Of course most of us would consider the outright bribery of our elected officials by multinational corporations to be treasonous. The US copyright system, which is being forced down the throats of more and more nations, was a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED monopoly in the form of government imposed copyrights We, The People got in return a richer and more diverse Public Domain for all of us.

But we have been robbed, and the contract broken. We, The People are no longer represented anymore, because we can't cut individual checks to bribe our own elected officials like the multinationals can. Until We, The People are once again represented at the bargaining table then ALL copyrights should be considered by the people of this country and all those who have American copyrights forced upon them null and void and completely ignored. Crooked laws created by bribed officials should be looked upon as the illegal acts that they are. Period

Re:Justifying piracy (Score:5, Insightful)

by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Thursday June 18, @10:29PM (#28384575) Homepage

The US copyright system, which is being forced down the throats of more and more nations, was a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED monopoly in the form of government imposed copyrights We, The People got in return a richer and more diverse Public Domain for all of us.

Somehow this is what seems to get lost in a lot of copyright discussions. Not to give a complete history of the copyright, but there was a time when we had no copyright, and people wrote books, painted, composed music, and performed it because they wanted to, and often they found ways to get paid for their expertise and talent. One common way was to do work that someone else wanted them to do on commission, whether they wanted to do it or not. Though many artists wished to have control over their own work, it was just silly to expect as much. Another artist would copy your painting, or another author might rewrite your story, and that's how culture developed.

And basically all that was fine until the the printing press arrived, and book publishers started making a fortune from printing books, neglecting to pay the authors. People recognized this as unfair and discouraging to those who might want to write a book, so they invented the idea of the copyright. The idea wasn't to ensure profitability for  publishers by forcing readers to pay for the right to read a book, nor was it meant to allow authors to control the destiny of their work, but it was solely a way to help authors get a share of the huge profits publishers were already making.

Flash forward to the present, and now copyrights are being  manipulated in such a way as to have almost the opposite effect that was intended. Copyrights are being used to guarantee profits for the publishers, while the artists are being denied their fair share of the profits. If anything, the Internet should allow us to go back to  pre-copyright days, since distribution doesn't really require a "publisher" in the same way.

Now I'm not saying we actually should drop copyrights, but only that convention has twisted the purpose of the copyright and given bad expectations about what copyrights will accomplish. Now we think that people own, buy, and sell ideas. Further, that if you own an idea, you should retain ownership and complete control forever. That's just an unsustainable situation.

I import much of my music from mp3sparks in Russia, which as far as I can tell (and I've spent over an hour researching) is legal. I'm sad that the artist doesn't get their 2 pence per track (or whatever) but consoled by the fact that the immoral music industry doesn't get the other 98 pence. The fact that music publishers have directed artists not to register with the Russian copyright agency to receive their Russian equivalent of 2p makes me laugh even more. The only widely acclaimed moral response is actually to not buy music published by immoral publishers at all.