So, I got a letter from the ESA today...

[Khamsin]

He has downloaded games and movies before they came out. According to the MPAA, RIAA and ESA that is stealing. They don't care what your intentions are. Its pretty black in white in their eyes no grey areas.


I've downloaded tons of shit on the internet but I've always known it was stealing.

If he steals songs and movies before they come out, how did the studios still manage to release them? I knew some people who had stolen HP6 movie before it was recently released in theaters, and HP7 book shortly before it was on sale to the public. But in both cases, the studio managed to re-film the movie in time for the premiere, and Rowling managed to rewrite the book from her notes, despite it having been stolen.

I wonder, though, with such valuable works being stolen so often, the insurance companies must be going broke with all the claims. I wonder how much Epic Games got from their insurance company when they reported the theft of one of their games. Did they call 911 when they discovered a robbery had taken place?

To me, you're talking more in line with industrial espionage or something, not theft. You're revealing or distributing a company's secrets without permission, and it may impact their profits. But not because they came into the office one day to find the window broken and their movie missing just before the big premiere.

[Insanecyclone]

I've only torrented Fallout 3 and it was a good decision to make

[miokomioko]

when someone bought said item, they should be allowed to do whatever they want with it.

That's just it. You're not buying the music. You're not buying the lyrics, the noises the instruments make. You're not even buying the .m4a files. You're only buying the very limited rights to listen to the music provided in whatever format you choose (cd/m4a/mp3/etc.). You're not buying the right to violate copyright and intellectual property laws and distribute someone's hard work and artistic creations to, essentially, display it publicly.

Not many people understand this. If I am hired to take a photograph for someone, they aren't buying the image to do with as they please. They aren't buying my RAW file or PSD or whatever format I deliver. They are literally only buying the limited rights to publish MY image in a specific publication, specific size, specific website, specific, specific specific, for only a specific amount of time. Any violations of this written usage contract = I take them to court and get paid for whatever I would have normally charged them for usage where they published it without concent. I also have my court fees reimbursed. These are mostly international laws here of the world you were born into, get used to it. However, I still need to figure out of these apply to Thailand because some Thai fucker stole my photo off Flickr and advertised their business all over Thailand's major international airport with it.

[Qalbert]

If he steals songs and movies before they come out, how did the studios still manage to release them? I knew some people who had stolen HP6 movie before it was recently released in theaters, and HP7 book shortly before it was on sale to the public. But in both cases, the studio managed to re-film the movie in time for the premiere, and Rowling managed to rewrite the book from her notes, despite it having been stolen.

I wonder, though, with such valuable works being stolen so often, the insurance companies must be going broke with all the claims. I wonder how much Epic Games got from their insurance company when they reported the theft of one of their games. Did they call 911 when they discovered a robbery had taken place?

To me, you're talking more in line with industrial espionage or something, not theft. You're revealing or distributing a company's secrets without permission, and it may impact their profits. But not because they came into the office one day to find the window broken and their movie missing just before the big premiere.

I'm reeeeallly hoping this is just brilliant sarcasm.

[zoobernut]

That's just it. You're not buying the music. You're not buying the lyrics, the noises the instruments make. You're not even buying the .m4a files. You're only buying the very limited rights to listen to the music provided in whatever format you choose (cd/m4a/mp3/etc.). You're not buying the right to violate copyright and intellectual property laws and distribute someone's hard work and artistic creations to, essentially, display it publicly.

Not many people understand this. If I am hired to take a photograph for someone, they aren't buying the image to do with as they please. They aren't buying my RAW file or PSD or whatever format I deliver. They are literally only buying the limited rights to publish MY image in a specific publication, specific size, specific website, specific, specific specific, for only a specific amount of time. Any violations of this written usage contract = I take them to court and get paid for whatever I would have normally charged them for usage where they published it without concent. I also have my court fees reimbursed. These are mostly international laws here of the world you were born into, get used to it. However, I still need to figure out of these apply to Thailand because some Thai fucker stole my photo off Flickr and advertised their business all over Thailand's major international airport with it.

With respect to the photography thing that depends on your contract. I am pretty sure when you hire a wedding photographer you are paying for the photographers services and any and all pictures produced during their time hired belong to you and not to the photographer. They have to ask you permission to use them not the other way around. So even with other types of art this area gets gray and strange when you start talking about commissioned art.

[miokomioko]

It's the other way around. By default you own anything you create (being general here) and other people are responsible for not infriging on your property. You, the creator, would need to sign (verbalize) a contract giving others the rights to do what the want with something you created. Even in the situation of the wedding photographer, people are most likely not paying for the rights to publish their wedding images to the extent that we are talking about here. You are paying for their time, you are paying for their creativity (creative fees), you are paying for materials, and you are paying for a product which is a physical print usually. There will be specific stipulations about where you can or can't display said photos and whether or not you have to accompany photo-credit.

There's not any grey area here. You create something, someone else displays it, distributes it, or sells it = they owe you the money that you would have made doing the same thing. If anyone were to do as they please with something you created, THEY NEED YOUR PERMISSION.

You can talk about work-for-hire where you sign a contract to create something that you are simultaneously giving all the rights to your client for. However, that is still the permission we are talking about. That's also what any non-desperate and financially wise artist knows not to agree to.

In a nutshell, (unless an artist specifically gives someone the rights to do so) any copyright-infriging individual owes the artist damages equal to how much the artist would have (or could have) made by doing the same thing or also how much value the piece of work has been diminished by the act of infringement. Displaying a film publicly hurts prospective rentals, ppvs, dvd purchases, box office, etc. They can make lots of arguments about how any act hurts the value of their work/product and as miniscule and immeasureable as it may be, it's truth.


Lastly and completely realistically, I would do work-for-hire where I don't retain all the rights to the work procured for the contract. HOWEVER, it would be in ANY artists best interest to have a clause in the contract that retains your rights to at least use the work for advertising yourself. You would be kicking yourself if you took a badass image that became the face of a huge ad campaign, signed all the rights away and still couldn't have it in your public portfolio to endorse yourself. I have had to sign contracts in the past like this. This is how it is for most model-testing for modeling agencies. They will give you a model to shoot if, and only if, you agree to give them rights to advertise themselves and their models with the images as much as they like and you can do the same. You generally agree that "neither of us can sell the usage or rights to this to anyone, but we can publish it to endorse ourselves however we like."

As much as I'd like to talk about this, it's bit off topic. A record label generally pays a musician lots of money for the rights to all their music they make for the albums they are signed on for. The musician loses control of what happens to it after he creates it. However, he does usually retain the rights to endorse themselves with it. Now, the record labels put the music in many different forms to get it to the masses. When you pay for one of these forms of music, you're only paying to hear it, not to do as you please with the information/data/etc.