You have no sympathy for someone who was told "If you write us a book, we'll give you some money every time we sell one", and then no one gives him the money they promised?
Your hn bio says you are a former Microsoft engineer. This is equivalent to microsoft hiring you, you doing some work for them, and them deciding that they don't need to pay you.
Zero sympathy. Just as I would have no sympathy for a carpenter who carves a baseball bat, sells it to a mob boss, and then asks the mob boss for a share every time he extorts someone with it.
Imaginary Property laws are unethical. Doesn't matter what part of the transaction you are a part of, the whole scheme is bad.
I stopped getting paid by Microsoft when I stopped working there, even though a billion+ people are using some code that I had a hand in writing. That's the way it should be.
When a janitor finishes cleaning a room, does she get 10 cents every time someone enters that room for 80 years?
You do, I assume, feel a bit guilty about having accepted money from a company that was only able to pay you because of imaginary property laws? As one might feel guilty doing honest work, honestly, for a mob boss?
Oh totally. I went in there with an open mind, thinking maybe I was wrong about the imaginary property thing. I came out of there more certain that imaginary property laws are bad, however I also came away greatly impressed by all the people there (many who worked there way there from some of the most destitute places on earth, so who am I to say they shouldn’t buy that Tesla because it’s money from imaginary property laws?). I have been secretly confused about Microsoft’s strategy the past 6 or 7 years under Satya. The embrace of Linux, open source, GitHub, vscode; it seems Microsoft is sprinting away from depending on Imaginary Property laws, but that was traditionally the source of their enormous profits in the 90’s. I don’t claim to understand what’s going on at the c-level (those folks are way smarter than me), but it does seem like there is a new game plan. My first week in 2014 people were laughing at me for getting Ubuntu on my machine, and pitching GitHub over SOurceDepot; how things have changed.
But yeah, I felt guilty when I crashed my bike on the way to work; walked over to the on site hospital and got X-rays and a sling without a copay ; got paid $50 while I was there to get a flu shot; grabbed a latte on my way back to the desk; committed a few línea; then clocked out early to head to the pool. Knowing that it’s most likely imaginary property laws paying for the utopia in Redmond. I really hope more people can work at places like that, and I do hope that places like that are still possible without an unnatural imaginary property system.
In this case, Lucas Arts is equivalent to the mob and is forcing someone to pay money for their book?
> I stopped getting paid by Microsoft when I stopped working there, even though a billion+ people are using some code that I had a hand in writing. That's the way it should be.
That's because there was nothing in your contract that you would make royalties for the code you wrote. So of course they wouldn't pay you. But what if they just stopped paying you while you were still working there?
> When a janitor finishes cleaning a room, does she get 10 cents every time someone enters that room for 80 years?
Again, no, because that's not what the contract says.
Do you have a problem with an author writing a book and then selling the book? Or is it just when an author is promised $X in royalties per sale from the company that is actually selling the books that is not ethical?
> In this case, Lucas Arts is equivalent to the mob and is forcing someone to pay money for their book?
Absolutely. If you pay attention to the beginning of every Disney/Lucas Arts movie, they all start with the threat of violence (proof: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/L3OPoOUMQ2M/hqdefault.jpg). And those aren't baseball bats the FBI carries around in their holsters.
> But what if they just stopped paying you while you were still working there?
I would stop working there. Many years ago I was a contractor and that happened with a client every now and again.
> Do you have a problem with an author writing a book and then selling the book?
Nope, no problems with an author writing a book, getting paid to write a book, or giving a book they've written to someone in return for cash. I have a problem with an author expecting "royalties" via an "Imaginary Property Law" scheme enforced by violence.
Let's say I'm a private individual who thinks the world would love a book on robot kittens. The author I want to write the book says she will do it for $1M. But I don't have $1M to pay her. So we both agree that I will pay her some lesser amount, say $100,000, and then give her $1 for every book I sell. She's hoping I will sell more than 900,000 books, and I'm also hoping that. What exactly is unethical about that? How is that any less ethical than an author selling their own book directly, or selling their book wholesale to some other party (who then sells the book)?
Absolutely nothing unethical about that. Perhaps foolish, from a business standpoint (I don't know much about robot kittens, but I have to admit it does sound intriguing), but nothing unethical.
What is unethical is saying, "you write a book on kittens, I'll print and sell the books and if anyone who buys it from me then tried to make copies, I'll have the government pay them a visit with guns". And that is exactly how our Imaginary Property system works.
It seems pretty straightforward what breck is claiming, I'm astonished at the incomprehension and downvotes.
Breck has said, plainly, that the author is welcome to write a book and sell copies (on robot kittens or otherwise). Or accept money for writing a book, or offer money to write a book, with or without selling copies.
Breck has also claimed that it is unethical for the author to attempt to control what purchasers of that book do with those copies, e.g. make copies of their own and sell them. Relatedly, they claim that it's unethical to profit off of someone else enforcing such control.
In modern legal systems, if that purchaser sells copies, likely the author will ask the government to exercise their monopoly on violence to stop the copier, claiming that the copier violates "copy right", the right to control copying. Breck is saying that it is unethical for the government to stop this copying, and unethical for the author to ask the government to do so. This is a very coherent and reasonable position, though you may reasonably disagree.
From this, breck reasons that if ADF has a contract with Disney that, to make any sense at all, requires that copyright be enforced, then defaults on this rogue's contract are not breck's ethical business, and thus breck is not sad that the contract is being violated. Much as breck would not be sad on the carpenter's behalf if the mob boss didn't pay his licensing fee, because the whole contract between the mob boss and the carpenter is (according to breck) unethical.
Perhaps my confusion stems from how completely orthogonal this point is to the discussion of a contract not being upheld.
Even in a hypothetical world where all "Imaginary Property" is completely free as breck imagines it could be, people may still choose to pay me for developing the robot kitten book. And if I have a contract with you that stipulates I get $9 from that money and you get $1 from that money, I would need to pay you.
If breck has no sympathy for this person who is allegedly being screwed over by Disney, then he also has no sympathy for almost all writers, painters, photographers, and other artists in the world. Also, most programmers, since even the most popular open source software licenses still introduce restrictions with the threat of punishment. I'm sure breck publishes all of his code in Zero-Clause BSD, but that is categorized as "Other" (< 1%) when it comes to most popular github licenses, so there sure are a lot of unethical githubbers.
So we've learned that breck has, basically, no sympathy for anybody. That's not a very interesting life philosophy in my book, and one I don't actually buy, which is why I was inquiring about the details of his viewpoints.
There are a whole class of contracts called “unenforceable contracts”, and what I’m arguing is that imaginary property laws should fall into that category.
They don’t, of course, not yet, and I think this guy has a strong case against Disney, if not ethical.
I understand initially thinking it's completely orthogonal; I had the same initial misunderstanding. That's the utility of the mob boss analogy.
Imagine I sell weapons, legally and honestly, but also knowingly to "bad people". Suppose that those bad people acquire the money to pay me by doing things that you and I both agree are unethical (but perhaps legal, perhaps by a technicality), facilitated in part by the weapons I sold. We agree that, in this hypothetical, I'm contributing to unethical behaviour, right? So then, imagine that my contract with these bad people is in some way violated, so that I don't receive the full benefits I was entitled to, under the terms of sale of the weapons. Perhaps they were going to pay me over 4 easy payments of 99.99, and they defaulted after 2 payments.
I think many people would agree that it's kinda my own fault for entering into such a bargain with such a devil. Breck is expressing that they fall into this camp. It's a very common position. An idea that's distinct-but-similar is the idea that it might be unlawful or unethical to possess stolen property, especially if knowingly so, even if you definitely did not yourself steal it. It seems pretty easy to imagine breck saying "I'm not that wound up about jholman having oh_sigh's stolen property, but I definitely would have no sympathy for jholman if someone else were to steal that property away from him too".
As for the "breck must have no sympathy for anyone", you're not making enough of an effort. First of all, most writers write at an hourly rate, not for a cut of the profits, for example most advertising copywriters, most journalists, etc. Most painters sell paintings, not licenses, and while they tend to object to copying, most of their income comes mostly independent of law of copyright, because of cultural norms about what the worth of a painting is. As with the painters, so with most artists in the world. Etsy jewellers, for example, do not depend on copyright for their livelihood. Photographers maybe more true, and programmers, you're probably right. But you're wrong about the GPL; given what breck has claimed about their values, I can imagine two or three variations within those claims that are ethically consistent with the GPL.
But finally, when you say "basically, no sympathy for anybody", this is truly silly. Even if everything I said in the previous paragraph is wrong, all writers, programmers, and artists collectively, make up a pretty small slice of the world. Even in the developed world there are many industries that work primarily by making and distributing physicals goods where copyright is irrelevant, and in the developing world this is even more true. That's billions of people that breck can still have sympathy for.
I mean, once upon a time I believed some variation of what breck is claiming. I don't believe it any longer; I currently tend to believe that at least some copyright law is probably better for society than no copyright law. But they seem to be espousing it consistently.
> I mean, once upon a time I believed some variation of what breck is claiming. I don't believe it any longer; I currently tend to believe that at least some copyright law is probably better for society than no copyright law.
I've gone back and forth on this as well, though my opinion has never been as extreme and uncompromising as breck's. I believe copyright law has gotten entirely out of hand, but agree with you that we probably should have some kind of copyright law.
> But they seem to be espousing it consistently.
Which is the problem, I think. It just comes off as naive and foolish, and shows a lack of critical thinking or practical understanding of how the world works and why it works the way it does.
Regarding sympathy: Disney uses copyright to fuel its greed. Foster uses it to make a decent living doing what he loves and believes will delight others. Having no sympathy for Foster in this situation is heartless and cold; I have zero respect for anyone who would take that position. Perhaps the other commenter is going overboard on hyperbole to suggest that breck has no sympathy for "anybody", but a lack of sympathy for Foster in particular says some strongly negative things about breck's character. And there comes that critical thinking again: it is perfectly reasonable -- and desirable, in a healthy society -- to be sympathetic toward Foster while still uncompromisingly believing that IP law is unethical.
I do try and look at things critically, but with regards to Imaginary Property laws, I think there is an order of magnitude difference between right and wrong.
There is still not enough good critical research on the topic If anyone know of any orgs focused on this doing non-traditional research into IP/or specifically working to abolish them(rules out EFF, which I support but this is not their focus), please let me know.
One positive side effect of my "trolling" is getting to read the more eloquent discusssions between people like you and jholman.
1) breck seems to not understand what the whole thing is actually about. It's about one party with a contractual obligation to pay another party some money every time the first party sells a book. Even if copyright law disappeared tomorrow, that contractual obligation would still exist. Sure, it might be harder for Disney to sell those books if copyright didn't exist and people could copy them for free, but that wouldn't remove their royalty obligation, as that's a contractual obligation that does not rely on copyright to function.
2) breck's attitude toward IP law is just... tiresome and annoying, I guess? Most people here likely either don't agree with it, or are sympathetic to it, but believe breck's ideal world is just generally unworkable from a practical perspective. Personally I find that kind of anti-IP thinking to be naive, and people who push it in the way breck is doing just come off as kinda trollish.
breck is of course absolutely right that copyright law -- like all our laws -- is enforced at the point of a gun. But... so what? That's how laws work.
> From this, breck reasons that if ADF has a contract with Disney that, to make any sense at all, requires that copyright be enforced...
Just to call this out specifically: no, that's completely incorrect. Even if there was no copyright law, Disney's contract with Foster would still be in full effect.
But ok, let's admit that contract would have been absurd from day one, because in a no-copyright world, both Disney (well, at that time, George Lucas) and Foster would know that they'd never be able to sell any more than a few copies that would then be freely copied and distributed. So they'd make like $12 and that would be it. So some other arrangement would have been made up front. Perhaps LucasFilm would have made up a contract with Foster that says they would be Foster's patron, and would pay him some monthly or yearly stipend, for some specified number of years, as a reward for writing the book. Or whatever. And then let's say Disney later buys LucasFilm while the contract is still paying out. Disney is still contractually obligated to continue paying, but they decide they don't feel like it, and don't pay.
And this bit is what the original article is about. It has nothing to do with copyright; it's about a giant corporation refusing to honor its contractual obligations when those obligations are to regular people who don't have the resources to fight them. Coming here and dropping a low effort "I have no sympathy" comment is a waste of our time and shows a lack of empathy, justified with an argument (against IP law) that is unrelated to Foster's woes or Disney's obligations.
> like all our laws -- is enforced at the point of a gun. But... so what? That's how laws work.
that's a fair point.
But an extremely critical aspect of contract law is the notion of unenforceable contracts. The court is not going to enforce a contract to share racketeering profits, and it shouldn't enforce Imaginary Property contracts either.
> just generally unworkable from a practical perspective. Personally I find that kind of anti-IP thinking to be naive
We are moving there (I've been working in this area for nearly 2 decades now—but obviously some people many more decades than hat), but it is a continuous struggle.
Your code is not intellectual property, though. Neither is the janitor's cleaning.
A better analogy is you sold a company to Microsoft and retained 10% equity (or any other number, who cares), and Microsoft decided to whatever you're owed in dividends.
Intellectual Property is just equity in little businesses, where each song, book, movie, what have you is a little business of its own.
The writer is not an employee. He never was. He was contracted to build a business, and was entitled to <50% of its equity. Disney is keeping that equity for himself.
Does that elicit any empathy with you, or do you still not understand how this works?
Authors and publishers can make any agreements they want to between themselves. But if their agreements depend on the subjugation of a third person or peoples, tough luck getting me to care when one party does not pay the other.
In America we have a very deep history with a similar system.
This actually has nothing to do with "Imaginary Property Laws". And everything to do with contractual agreement. They're obligated to follow the contractual agreement even if the underlying property is (or ought depending on your view) worthless. It seems like a big leap to go from IP isn't real to allowing a massive corporation to reneg its agreements.
Why don’t you have sympathy for the author? Regardless of how you feel about the flagrant breach of contract, the fact that he needs the money to pay the cost of his cancer treatment certainly elicits sympathy from me.
