<i>The whole "replication" angle is a total red-herring brought up by apologists for movie pirates. People are entitled to sell their work for the price that they can get for it, irrespective of the marginal cost of production, and should not be required to compete with entities that do not produce their own products, but simply free-ride on the work of others, being able to "sell" to consumers for the cost of distribution because they don't bear the cost of actually creating that work.</i>
Megaupload and pirates in general don't steal content from anyone. They create their own copies of publicly available content. I don't understand why digital data should be treated differently then physical objects. It's like calling a carpenter, who creates a copy of some furniture that he likes and sell it, a thief. On the other hand, proponents of copyright are seriously hampering the right of everyone to use publicly available information around us for our creative efforts. This seriously limits our creative potential because it's not like creative works are created out of thin air, they are always derived from our past experiences which influenced us in some way. The proponents of copyright are standing on the shoulders of giants but they don't want anyone to further build upon their work.
p.s.: before someone accuses me that i don't want creators to be paid fairly for their work - i think that some regulation is necessary which would ensure promotion of fine arts but this regulation cannot be based on artificial limits on distribution of public knowledge/culture.
Like pg said, Netflix and Megaupload are publishers. I dislike your carpenter analogy because it conflates the creative aspect of the film industry (music, et al) with the distributive aspect.
Traditional publishers deserve to die if films can be distributed for free. So I wouldn't begrudge pirate sites as long the film's creators were compensated. But as I understand, pirate sites never pay the creators a dime. I think this is an important problem since royalties are what motivate creators to make stuff in the first place.
Every time this point comes up I feel compelled to mention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Not to say the the pirates aren't that bad, but more to remind that the studios and distributors aren't much better.
Yeah. I know a guy who takes the same stance. It's tough being an artist.
> Pirating isn't that radical since studios pay artists scraps anyway. If you really like an artist, you attend their gigs and buy the merch. That's where the artists really make their money.
Megaupload and pirates in general don't steal content from anyone. They create their own copies of publicly available content. I don't understand why digital data should be treated differently then physical objects. It's like calling a carpenter, who creates a copy of some furniture that he likes and sell it, a thief. On the other hand, proponents of copyright are seriously hampering the right of everyone to use publicly available information around us for our creative efforts. This seriously limits our creative potential because it's not like creative works are created out of thin air, they are always derived from our past experiences which influenced us in some way. The proponents of copyright are standing on the shoulders of giants but they don't want anyone to further build upon their work. p.s.: before someone accuses me that i don't want creators to be paid fairly for their work - i think that some regulation is necessary which would ensure promotion of fine arts but this regulation cannot be based on artificial limits on distribution of public knowledge/culture.