Hi czgibson
I think Steve argues the case from a theoretical point of view quite well, although I would ask him this:
If there were no copyright law, wouldn't a massive incentive be removed for artists, inventors, writers, filmmakers and musicians? Wouldn't that actually stultify our culture, sending us back to the days when only the wealthy and leisure-rich would produce anything creative? Why embark on that if there is no potential financial reward whatever?
I doubt it'd be really that bad, people don't just make creative things because of the money it pays or the leisure time spent. People make art to express point of views, to teach or to see kacceptance from society, to shock, to get girls, there's tons of reasons. And even without copyrights, artists could still make a living just not that high a living as some currently make, no their work would be rewarded by the hour, like any other worker in any other buisness. I don't see what's wrong with that.
Let's face it, people don't always create things just because they were feeling inspired one day. Often the fruits of creative work are only revealed after years of patient study. Shouldn't we encourage creativity in our society?
Well I think abandoning copyright actually encourages creativity. Copying is human nature. From childhood on we learn by copying from one another. In sociology we see how adults are influenced by peer pressure. The most famous scientists all based their work on those that preceeded them by copying the process and adding something more. And when competition is harder, people tend to push themselves further. Secondly consider that ideas multiply. Say if we each have a dollar, and I give my dollar to you and you give your dollar to me, then we still each have one dollar. However if I share my idea with you, and you share yours with me, then we both have two ideas.
Hi Sixten
Wrong, I don't know why people try justify it.
So you're naturally assuming my justification is false and my intentions are doubious. Can you read my mind, can you see my intentions? It's easy to just claim that I am wrong and bad without proving it. You should better look in your own heart cause you are slandering me. If you want to bring your opinion and debate against my arguments, be welcome to do so. But just attacking me without any base to back that up is just wrong.
Hi Qassi!
well........if ur not downloading the content from YouTube, I dont really see anything wrong with it.
Actually when you watch something in streaming, your internet-browser downloads the video and saves it in a temporary file. So it's the same thing.
Hi Whatsthepoint
format_quote Originally Posted by
Whatsthepoint
It's not just the discovery of the substance that's expensive, its also the development, safety tests, trials on humans etc, so the end costs of an original drug are huge, usually a couple of hundred of millions, sometimes even more.
Yes I know, and despite that I still stand by my counter that you need to take this figure with a big pinch of salt.
So suppose a company invests millions in the development of a drug and a rival company happens to discover the formula or gets it say from an employee, spends a couple of millions on clinical tests and starts selling it under a lower price, getting the market advantage. This could cause a lot of companies to stop developing new drugs. And besides, even if there still were competition and creativity, people could still use other people's ideas and gain money, which I personally find wrong.
Well like I said, it won't be millions, and despite that, there is still profit to be made. It might take a few extra years to break even. But they would still make a profit, just a slightly smaller one.
Other fields of research may do well without the protection of patents, but I don't think the pharmaceutical industry is among them.
Perhaps you're right about that. Be that as it may, I still think its profitable without exclusive rights
What about logos and slogans, do you think a company has the sole right to use its company logo or should those be public property as well?
No, that is one of the few exceptions. In trademarks, there's not only the issue of freedom to copy, but there's also the issue of lying (by pretending to be someone else) and damaging reputaion (if the counterfit is of inferior quality as the origenal). So because of that, trademark infringement can be argued to be unethical.
Medical science and pharmaceutical science are two separate sciences.
Patatoes, Phatatos. They are different yes, but my argument stands for pharmaceuticle science to. All the major advancements, peniciline, antibiotics, many of the vaccins, anti-inflamatories, or even the simple acetylcalycil; all of those have not been made by multinationals.
Governments and NPOs do not develop new drugs, a government can introduce laws to encourage pharmaceutical companies to make the more affordable or develop non-profitable drugs, NPOs can raise money and ship the drugs to Africa. In these days it is impossible to discover a healing substance and develop it into a drug without the backing of a pharmaceutical company.
Perhaps not the American Government, but many European, SouthAmerican, middle eastern, and azian countries have state hospitals who do reasearch in pharmaceutics to. My home country Belgium is a leading example as a matter of fact and many new advancements come from these hospitals.
Nature does exhibits certain properties I'm not denying that.
But just because wolfram glows under the electric current that doesn't mean the idea of putting wolfram under the electric current existed prior to Edison doing it.
But then again I could argue that an idea is an abstract concept and thus
never truely exists.
The tree-sound and math analogies are analogies, not really the best ones, sound waves are a physical phenomena, so is addition in a way. Tell me, why do you you think you can deduct these to example to every single idea? And how can you prove your deductions are true?
True, the tree analogy is false since it refers to something physical. However, I didn't bring it as an analogy, I brought it up since both cases deal with the same underlying philosophical idea. Secondly math is abstract just as ideas, and therefor that analogy would still stand.
To answer your second point, the physical laws are the same all over the world, friction works the same, gravity works the same etc. Humans too are pretty much the same, our brain and its capabilities to solve problems are similar in all people, so I don't see it all that strange that separate cultures came to similar solutions when dealing with similar problems. That and the fact that humans, no matter if you're a creationist or an evolutionist, derive from the same area, so certain human ways passed on from the original human or primate society to all the later societies.
Yes of course, similar results from simular processes. I won't argue with that. However that doesn't change my point. My point was that these ideas are not exclusivly linked to the first thinker and therfor neither should the right to use that idea be linked to the first thinker exclusivly.
And even if ideas exist independently, that doesn't mean people can't claim ownership over their inventions, they were the first to discover the idea, so in a way its technically theirs, like uninhabited land.
Here you fall under the material vs abstract flaw again. In the case of land, we're dealing with material possesion, and theft in the case that someone tries to illegaly disown that land.
And for the most part they put a lot of effort in it and IMHO that is a reason enough for their ideas to be protected by law.
I already answered that before didn't I? I think you're running in circles now.
I don't think we can prove whether it is ethical or logical, as I believe these two categories aren't absolute (you can prove the opposite if you want),
I stronglt disagree here, even though one can never "prove" a philosophical school of thought, we are at some point forced to accept one viewor the other. If we do not, every single argument you make about pretty much anything would fail. Every law would be pointless without philosophy of etics and logic. In fact you can't even argue without logic! These two schools of thought are essential to any debate. To say that you want nothing to do with it, yet continue debating is in a way even hypocrite.
but we can argue about benefits to the society or the individual, which again leaves us at unprovable premises, that is what matters more, the well-being of the society as a whole or individual rights. It often comes down to this.
Yes it does, as I already pointed out several posts ago ^_^
What I'm saying is that both material theft and piracy are a subset of theft, so just because the subsets are different they can still belong to the same set.
Yes i know you point already, and what I am saying is that this is simply not true. Not semantically, not linguistically and not philosophically.
As I said, piracy deprives the inventor of potential profits and I don't see why this shouldn't be considered a form of theft.
Because it's circular. You assume that the profits are rightfully theirs in the first place, then you use that assumption to argue that copyrights should be protected. And since copyrights should be protected, the fruit of the idea should be exclusivly theirs. Well that's flawed by circularity, you can never use that which you set out to prove in your proof.
You claim they're abstract, but at the same time you claim ideas exist independently, so why not profits?
Do you question wheter ideas are abstract? How can they not be abstract? There is no indication once so ever of a material nature of an idea. As far as we know they are sticttly conceptual and not objects. To imply that they are not abstract is insane. And in fact this very charesteristic, their abstractness by itself guarantees that these ideas are independent, isolated on their own.