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Old 2011-06-19, 20:28   Link #55
DonQuigleone
Knight Errant
 
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexx View Post
Getting back to the "original topic" though... "second hand sales" are firmly established under "right of first sale" doctrine as affirmed by courts.
Example: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...05496397.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/fo...9/crm01854.htm

What the entertainment industry is trying to do is obliterate this anchorstone of copyright limitations. It should be noted that the EU has a less stringent version of "first sale" rights in that the creator may get a cut of subsequent sales of a particular copy. I'm using the term "creator" because I have a real philosophical issue with the notion of "assigning the rights of creation" away.

As for "patent and copyright"... those are *relatively recent* notions in human history. Before... any idea instantly entered the "public domain and Creative Commons" (yet people innovated anyway). Patent and copyright law evolved to give creators *TEMPORARY* protection to recover their costs and make a bit of money. The current situation is so far tilted that it stifles innovation in favor of protecting a few gatekeepers hoarding existing materials to the detriment of society as a whole. The inevitable result is a corrosion of respect for law as the majority of society becomes scofflaws (aka Prohibition).
The law is the law, but the law, in this respect, was formulated in a time when all goods were physical. Where the physical production was a real element of the cost. To do a print run of books in the 15 century would have cost far more then the effort of actually writing one, and it's been like this right up to the 20th century. And it wasn't simply the raw printing costs, but the distribution network as well. So to have second hand sales makes sense in such a context. The physical object itself had value. There were only so many printed copies of a given book.

But this doesn't work when we start talking about disks. Your game disk is worth at most a single dollar. Practically speaking it's worthless. The entire value of your disk is in the information. Information can no longer be driven by "economies of scarcity", now infinite copies exist. So as I see it, there's only one reason to pay for information any more. Not for pragmatic reasons, but for ethical reasons. The ethical reason is to compensate the producer and by extension the next generation of products they will produce. Under this ethical imperative, buying your goods second hand is pointless. If you really wanted to save money you could just do things illegally. Buying second hand may be legal, but that's not a justifiable reason to do so, as the law is only supposed to be the law because it's ethically right. When the law no longer aligns with popular ethics then it will invariably have to be discarded. In this case I see no ethical reason for allowing resale of media. Your entertainment is not like your washing machine. There is no waste if you throw it out, because it does not really exist.

In this respect copyright law will have to change. There will come a stage where no jury that they can assemble will convict filesharers. At this point the judiciary will have to change the law.

As for the business model of media producers, I can convince it will become something like "busking" but on a larger scale. That's how most media producers were compensated in the past, and that's how it will probably be in the future. Games will be payed for by donation.

As for copyright generally, that's a ripe discussion that could probably take place in another thread. I will say that exists for a good reason, but personally I don't see why it extends past the death of it's holder. But with the internet being the way it is, there is no longer any inherent profit in distributing intellectual property. Copyright is going to have to shift in form.
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