MMAF.NET DEBATE: Should we replace Copyright with Copyleft? (free sharing)

[Spectre]

Scenario! As the name implies copyleft is an inversion of copyright. Where as copyright and intellectual property laws, restrict what you can share, copyleft lifts all these restrictions. Under copyleft, the only thing you CAN'T do, is sell someone's else's work that was shared with you for free, and falsely claim credit for other people's work. Implications of this are that file-sharing, burning CDs etc, would now be fully legal. Selling bootleg DVDs would still be illegal.

Should we switch to this system? Discuss.

[Thumpin]

I'm sure China is all for making this the way of life.

[Spectre]

I'm sure China is all for making this the way of life.

China knocks off and sells. Copyleft doesn't sell.

[Spectre]

I'm sure China is all for making this the way of life.

Also it's a bit silly to focus on China. The United States did the same thing to Britain back when it was developing, and most of the IP for companies like Disney were taken from people who had no IP protection.

Also, If you're worried about China, I'm not sure how this would be worse under copyleft. What would you be getting from China, that you wouldn't be able to get for free, or are now not currently getting from China?

Really, to bring up China at all is kinda odd.

[19nate79]

The future is YouTube. Not YouTube itself, but people posting their work and advertisers buying time on their feed.

[Tallica1981]

I'm a bit conflicted. I torrent like a mother****er. My Mp3 collection has eclipsed 100,000 files about 10 years ago and I have no idea what I have now. Same thing with movies, MMA, Software, books, etc. Now, I will likely never stop, but I do feel like there is something wrong about doing it. What right do I have to acquire these without pay if the artist, author, whatever doesn't want it that way?

[Sofargone]

I'm a bit conflicted. I torrent like a mother****er. My Mp3 collection has eclipsed 100,000 files about 10 years ago and I have no idea what I have now. Same thing with movies, MMA, Software, books, etc. Now, I will likely never stop, but I do feel like there is something wrong about doing it. What right do I have to acquire these without pay if the artist, author, whatever doesn't want it that way?

One way to look at is if your product is so popular that it is being pirated then more than likely you have made millions off it. It doesn't make it right to pirate but if your product is **** then nobody buys or pirate's it , kind of a bit of free advertising in exchange for having your product pirated. Look what piracy has done for DTV and Dish, both were and one is still heavily pirated and subscriber enrollment continues at a rapid pace. Some by natural growth and some by increased security making piracy more difficult.

[don king]

Music is the perfect pirate product for me. I download tons and tons of new (to me) music, and am buying more than ever. Good music grows on you and becomes better with repeated listening, so I feel it is free advertising for the artists to get in front of me. Of course, I do my part and do support them by purchasing stuff that excels. It also allows me to get recommendations from others and explore it on my own terms rather than have a bunch of mediocre or worse watered down corporate diarrhea forced down my throat by worthless radio programmers and squeezed in between brainwashing commercials. My pirating of music is a bonanza for the artists I am exposed to.

Now, I can afford to support them, and so I do. I am also going to a lot more live shows as a result. When I couldn't afford to do it, I didn't buy anything. It was still no loss, because I wouldn't have anyway.

Here's the most important thing to me: The artists need to be able to make a reasonable living. Most would be doing something uninspiring and not too well paying if they weren't artists. The fact that billions can be made only encourages crappy watered down garbage that appeals to the mindless masses. True artists are not in it to make popular garbage to maximize profit. Because music can easily be recorded cheaply now and distributed for next to nothing, the old paradigm is no longer valid.

Now, when it comes to movies, it's a completely different story. I buy a few DVDs of exceptional movies, but for the most part, it's not the same as music, and I don't want to watch them over and over again so they don't have the same value. I can listen to a CD 10 times and then buy it. Once I've watched a movie once, it's not the same. Of course, this could also be in part because most of the movies being made are forgettable pieces of sh1t. Thing is, though, it takes a lot of money to make a movie. Because of the high cost of production and diminished replay value, pirating is a lot worse for the movie industry.

[BulldogWrestler]

I'm torn on this too. I am 100% for "copy left", but I do see the damage it causes an artist or label or whatever when people readily obtain their product for free. Regardless if they sell it or not, it's still stealing. Intellectual property has value and should continue to have value or there is no point in people putting the effort into it.

[Ash]

Copyright laws as they stand need to be overhauled severely, so the theoretical "copyleft" would be a move in the right direction.

There are so many things wrong with almost every facet of entertainment, it's delivery, ownership laws, media, and everything else that I could write books about it. The fact that an end user's purchase of any given form of media sees it's owner or creator seeing little to no money from that sale is a significant problem. The wrong people are getting paid for said value of any IP.