[RD] Morals of enjoying works made by people who have done bad things

[Zelig]

Does it?

Yes, 100%. Can't really discuss further due to forum rules.

it's not really clear what particular good that would be expected to do in the long-term.

Money is a proxy for people's time. Making goods/services cheaper gives people back the very finite resource of time.

But you two are also ignoring the "indie" musicians, artists, authors, and innovators, who don't work for, or are not endorsed by, big media corporations, but seek to get NOTHING, and can claim no monetary reward, for their work, if IP's are abolished - whereas big media corporations will always find a way to get something out of their creations, or the creations of their employees or those they endorse.

That's a different problem, one that I leave for other people to solve. I can't fix everything. I also haven't called for IP to be abolished in the first place, so it's a bit a strawman problem anyway.

Also, IP laws help prevent someone else from just "mashing," in an unauthorized, and even aberrant way, the original creator's work into theirs and having declared, or be recognized, as "legitimate," in terms of the "integrity" and "cannon" of both works, and not just a flimsy parody.

That's already a problem for Beowulf. A work not being in public domain is, for any work, a very temporary state of affairs.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Does it? I remember the Pirate Bay. Slow downloads, files with unreliable quality or content, and the less mainstream the content, the slower and more unreliable it becomes.

Nah, there definitely aren't faster, more reliable ways when you look in the right places. And even if there were, we're definitely all good, law-abiding citizens. Right?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'll consume the works still, but I'll only acquire them via piracy, and I won't recommend them to anyone who I think might financially support the creator.

This is why I will never recommend the products put out by the owners of a gaming forum (not CFC) who treated me (and others) like crap over 10 years ago, to the point of doxxing a couple of us and openly suggesting that it would be "fun" if some of their forum buddies were to "contact" me (iow, stalking both online and offline). The gaming materials themselves are good. The conduct and other ideas espoused by the producers of said materials are reprehensible, and I will not facilitate them gaining so much as a single penny.

Unlike my previous examples, I'm unable to overlook the personally harmful things done by these people. I don't buy their stuff anymore, and canceled my subscriptions and informed the person running the comic/magazine shop in town exactly why I was canceling and would not be steering any more customers of that company to his store.

I think a good and just solution would be that works created by people convicted of sufficiently serious crimes immediately and irrevocably revert to the public domain upon conviction, so I operate as if that's already the case.

What if the royalties are partly or wholly what supports those individuals' families, who aren't necessarily part of whatever crimes were committed? Should children be punished for what their parents do?

 

[Zelig]

What if the royalties are partly or wholly what supports those individuals' families, who aren't necessarily part of whatever crimes were committed? Should children be punished for what their parents do?

That's the status quo. If someone with a salaried income goes to prison, they're no longer able to work to support their family.

 

[Traitorfish]

Money is a proxy for people's time. Making goods/services cheaper gives people back the very finite resource of time.

How much cheaper? Spotify and Netflix are about a tenner each. Most competing services have a similar price-point, and most people will pick whatever one they feels most overlaps with their preferences, rather than taking out multiple subscriptions. Abolishing intellectual property will lower the barrier of entry for new streaming services and encourage competition and may push down subscription charges as a result, but that's about it.

"Abolish intellectual property" is an only superficially radical slogan so long as the whole apparatus of production and distribution is left otherwise intact. It represents an attempt to address the problems of intellectual law without actually addressing any specific shortcoming, and it does so by attempting to supersede them without superseding the conditions which produced them. It's a contradiction.

 

[Patine]

How much cheaper? Spotify and Netflix are about a tenner each. Most competing services have a similar price-point, and most people will pick whatever one they feels most overlaps with their preferences, rather than taking out multiple subscriptions. Abolishing intellectual property will lower the barrier of entry for new streaming services and encourage competition and may push down subscription charges as a result, but that's about it.

"Abolish intellectual property" is a superficially radical slogan. It attempts to address the problems with intellectual property law- and they are surely myriad- by simply sweeping away the question, while leaving the whole apparatus of production and distribution intact.

It still is a real killer to independent artists, authors, and innovators just to hit big corporations (and not as much as you might think) and please spineless couch potatoes.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

That's the status quo. If someone with a salaried income goes to prison, they're no longer able to work to support their family.

Salary or hourly wages are not the same as royalties, which are not necessarily steady income.

 

[Zelig]

Salary or hourly wages are not the same as royalties, which are not necessarily steady income.

I don't see how that's relevant to your original question. When people get committed of serious crimes and go to prison, they can't provide for their families. Under my plan re: IP, that would be the case for IP revenue as well.

How much cheaper?

About 80%.

Most competing services have a similar price-point, and most people will pick whatever one they feels most overlaps with their preferences, rather than taking out multiple subscriptions. Abolishing intellectual property will lower the barrier of entry for new streaming services and encourage competition and may push down subscription charges as a result, but that's about it.

I don't really get what your point is. Obviously we can't save more resources by making something cheaper than the total amount of resources that the thing takes in the first place.

 

[Patine]

I don't see how that's relevant to your original question. When people get committed of serious crimes and go to prison, they can't provide for their families. Under my plan re: IP, that would be the case for IP revenue as well.

IP royalties shouldn't end just because the holder is incarcerated, as they are not like wages or salary, where going to work regularly is required, and, since they are part of inheritance and can be sold or transferred, there's no reason why the IP owner should forfeit all rights just of because of a conviction that leads to incarceration, but should not be able to transfer the royalty payments to family. It's NOT the same kind of income, and it doesn't follow the same rules. It's actually closer, legally, to owning a piece of property passively that collects income from rent. And I assure you, there are people in prison who own such property who are collecting that rent, or having it collected on their behalf by someone they delegate so to do.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I don't see how that's relevant to your original question. When people get committed of serious crimes and go to prison, they can't provide for their families. Under my plan re: IP, that would be the case for IP revenue as well.

You may not see the relevance, but Patine did.

You appear to want to punish the family for the misdeeds of the perpetrator. We're not talking about situations where the royalties are proceeds of a crime. The royalties were honestly earned, the crime has nothing to do with how or where the royalties were earned, so why shouldn't the family be able to benefit from them?

If you want to draft a law that says the perpetrator him/herself can't benefit, that's one thing. But preventing a spouse/children/other dependents from being supported is just unnecessarily vindictive.

 

[Zelig]

IP royalties shouldn't end just because the holder is incarcerated

I disagree.

It's actually closer, legally, to owning a piece of property passively that collects income from rent.

Not really. IP rights are a temporary thing that we grant only insofar as they're able to encourage creativity for the good of society as a whole. There's no clear analog to real estate.

The closest real estate analog I can think of is, say, someone who has a temporary allowance from the government to exclusively charge rent to access public land. Should we allow them to continue to charge the public to access publicly owned land while they're in prison?

You appear to want to punish the family for the misdeeds of the perpetrator.

Do you want to punish the family of a murderer by not allowing her to continue her job when she's in prison?

 

[Patine]

I disagree.



Not really. IP rights are a temporary thing that we grant only insofar as they're able to encourage creativity for the good of society as a whole. There's no clear analog to real estate.

The closest real estate analog I can think of is, say, someone who has a temporary allowance from the government to exclusively charge rent to access public land. Should we allow them to continue to charge the public to access publicly owned land while they're in prison?



Do you want to punish the family of a murderer by not allowing her to continue her job when she's in prison?

Collective punishment (family and community suffering for an individual's crimes as well) and making overkill examples of law and order by punishing lawbreakers in completely unrelated ways as well as standard areas were favourite policies of Stalin.

 

[Imaus]

Everyone before is ****, everyone after will view us as horsehockey. I can accept this. I don't even consume much to begin with and it's easy for me to avoid anything recent that's problematic or has hurt people now and around-abouts; and support victims and victimized/ignored/smaller people instead. And if some of them turn out to be horsehockey, then, well, there's always new creations and creators to find.

Now, if you absolutely love a work, but acknowledge and disdain the horsehockey creator, that's fine enough, I guess. I'm not going to throw anyone on the rack for still liking CKlewis or Spacey or even Takei's acting and works. There is such a thing as asking too much of people. Add the * to their works/articles/epitaphs, tone down the worship, move on.

 

[Zelig]

Collective punishment (family and community suffering for an individual's crimes as well) and making overkill examples of law and order by punishing lawbreakers in completely unrelated ways as well as standard areas were favourite policies of Stalin.

I agree. Not sure what you're referring to or how it relates to my proposal.

 

[Patine]

I agree. Not sure what you're referring to or how it relates to my proposal.

I guess you have great political debate skills, then. Attack your opponents rhetorically, even if you have to contrive material, or work on obviously flimsy ground, and deny any POSSIBLE mistake or flaw in your ideology could even possibly exist, even if it's as clear as day.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Do you want to punish the family of a murderer by not allowing her to continue her job when she's in prison?

Ideally the family should not be punished at all. Our society has supposedly advanced beyond the point of the Romans, say, where if the head of the family was executed, his wife, children, and slaves would also either be executed or sold into slavery.

Besides, who said we were talking about murder? The offenses the rest of us were discussing are the sex-related ones and ones related to hate speech.

Everyone before is ****, everyone after will view us as ******. I can accept this. I don't even consume much to begin with and it's easy for me to avoid anything recent that's problematic or has hurt people now and around-abouts; and support victims and victimized/ignored/smaller people instead. And if some of them turn out to be ******, then, well, there's always new creations and creators to find.

Now, if you absolutely love a work, but acknowledge and disdain the ****** creator, that's fine enough, I guess. I'm not going to throw anyone on the rack for still liking CKlewis or Spacey or even Takei's acting and works. There is such a thing as asking too much of people. Add the * to their works/articles/epitaphs, tone down the worship, move on.

Takei has a new memoir coming out (according to TrekBBS). Regardless of what he may have done in his adult life, I still find his account of his family being forced into an internment camp during WWII to be compelling reading.

I guess you have great political debate skills, then. Attack your opponents rhetorically, even if you have to contrive material, or work on obviously flimsy ground, and deny any POSSIBLE mistake or flaw in your ideology could even possibly exist, even if it's as clear as day.

"Not sure how what you said relates to what I said/this topic" is a tactic used by some folks here in an attempt to dismiss the other person's points.

I'm not fond of the "willfully obtuse" style of commenting.

 

[Zelig]

I guess you have great political debate skills, then. Attack your opponents rhetorically, even if you have to contrive material, or work on obviously flimsy ground, and deny any POSSIBLE mistake or flaw in your ideology could even possibly exist, even if it's as clear as day.

I haven't really attacked you, I've invited to you to clarify how your point is relevant.

Ideally the family should not be punished at all.

That's what you're doing if you take away rights of criminals who were previously supporting families, regardless of whether they're IP rights, or rights to pursue a career outside of prison.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

That's what you're doing if you take away rights of criminals who were previously supporting families, regardless of whether they're IP rights, or rights to pursue a career outside of prison.

Okay, things are getting weird here. Are you accusing me of wanting the families to suffer? I don't want that. That's what you seem to want, by forcing the rights/royalties to be stripped from the criminal (and therefore not usable by the innocent family who did not commit any crimes).

 

[Patine]

That's what you're doing if you take away rights of criminals who were previously supporting families, regardless of whether they're IP rights, or rights to pursue a career outside of prison.

You may or may not be aware that, in modern, First World nations, when you're sentenced to incarceration, while, indeed certain rights are suspended and certain privileges are removed for the duration of your incarceration and for the terms of such, and certain crimes may put you on certain registries thereafter upon release, you do not actually lose ALL RIGHTS and become a "non-citizen," "legal non-person," "stateless person," "declassified person," "Invisible," or "excommunicated one," irrevocably for the rest of your days. That may surprise you...

 

[Perfection]

Sometimes revelations about a creator's misdeeds impacts the meaning and context of the work. I used to think I was watching Kevin Spacey pretend to be a malevolent sociopath on House of Cards, I now I understand he was merely being himself. I can enjoy someone pretending to be a malevolent sociopath with the understanding that we're engaging in a dark fantasy but I most certainly do not want to watch a malevolent sociopath replicating the same terrible behavior he exhibits off screen on screen.

In short, I agree with @Cheetah's excellent post