Just because people in the US have legal access to content doesn't mean you're allowed to steal it. You make the assumption that you're entitled to something if it's commercially available to people in other parts of the world. You're not.
Movies and TV Shows aren't basic necessities that you're entitled to. They are luxuries that you can have if companies decide to sell them to you.
If the content is anyway not available, that argument vanishes and you are left without copyright.
Copyright is not some fundamental right that always exists, it only exists in certain limited circumstances.
(And seriously? Dangerous thinking?)
Except that if people already has a copy of your work and then you finally manage to secure a deal with a publisher in country x, you now can't sell it. Most of the interested parties already have it.
> (And seriously? Dangerous thinking?)
It's a slippery slope. Content creators should have full control over how their content can be consumed. This goes both ways - if they want it to be free then it should be free. Also, no other company should be able to infringe their copyright and start charging money for it, or modify it, or use it in a context that they haven't approved.
I record a piece of music, I own it. I say if you want to own a copy for personal consumption, it costs $5. End of the argument.
But making the real argument, if it's my DVD, I should be able to copy it.
Sure, but my point still stands :) Your friend shouldn't be allowed to copy their purchase and send it to you. They should be allowed to send you their purchase as a gift. People need to understand that just because something is digital it's not suddenly ok to endlessly copy and distribute it for free. What gives you the right? It may be unfortunate that the copyright owner of the show you like hasn't secured publishing/distribution rights in your country yet, but that doesn't give you the right to copy it for free because you really want to watch it.
> The movie companies put a technological mechanism in place to make that not work (in violation of EU regulations, but nothing seems to have happened about that), and got laws passed to make it illegal to circumvent that mechanism.
Yes, and I agree on this point. Region blocking sucks and it kills the gifting to an international friend scenario.
> But making the real argument, if it's my DVD, I should be able to copy it.
For your own personal use, yes.
I think you've inverted this. When things weren't digital, it was perfectly ok to e.g. buy a nice table, make a copy, and give that copy to a friend.
The argument for copyright is a balance of positives and negatives, the idea that the benefit to society of incentivising creators outweighs the cost to society of disallowing copying. It's very difficult to argue that this adds up in cases where the creator isn't selling something in a particular region.
I think you've just changed what we're talking about. But I'll run with it. Technically, copying furniture is not ok, it's infringing on the copyright of the design. But since it requires so much effort to copy the table manually, it's not done much, so no one really cares if a guy takes the nice table he bought and hand crafts a copy for his mate for Christmas. If he started a company cranking out copies of this design though, then it's another matter entirely and he would be shut down and sued.
In the case of digital files, copying literally takes half a second and no effort. And this ease makes it something that a lot of people do, which is why people really care about it.
> It's very difficult to argue that this adds up in cases where the creator isn't selling something in a particular region.
You say that like it's a choice for the creator of the work. For a lot of people it isn't, and it's just the way the system works. They have to wait until a publisher in that region of the world wants to publish their work, or wait until legal issues clear up before things can progress etc. I'm not saying it's a great system, but it's what is in place, and freely copying people's works because it isn't available in your region is probably harming the creator of the work since their potential market is taken away from them.
The idea that a design would be something you'd own, license, or keep track of, is a very new one.
> freely copying people's works because it isn't available in your region is probably harming the creator of the work since their potential market is taken away from them.
Sure, but by how much? Does it actually lead to works not being made, to creators going back to their day job? Is the cost actually bigger than the benefit of copying the work?
Also, as a policy this aligns the incentives correctly: it means creators and publishers are encouraged to find a way to distribute their work everywhere as soon as possible. Which is what copyright is supposed to do.
Plus some countries made it legal to make copy for personal use... and so on.
Yes, how dare someone not sell their widget everywhere! If Ford won't sell me a car in Argentina, I'll just go steal it!
It's a freedom issue! I must be able to legally watch Friends!
If <insert big pharma here> won't sell cancer drugs for reasonable prices in my country then we will have local companies ignore patents and produce knockoffs instead and sell them at production cost.
Which is exactly what's happening in india for example. Remember that you're not stealing anything. Just making copies.
Of course treating cancer does not have the same societal value as getting hollywood entertainment, but it's still a market failure when the content industry cannot satisfy demand in those countries. And at least turning both eyes is a much better approach than criminalizing millions.
Copyright only exists to promote selling content, take that away and copyright vanishes right along with it.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.Actually in such case piracy doesn't need any justification, since it doesn't harm anyone. With only two alternatives - either to download content illegally or to not get it at all, content owners get exactly the same: nothing.
How did you come this this conclusion?
http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and-mov...
Get real no one who has ever pirated anything is going to buy a DVD over pirating simply because buying the DVD is a really shitty service compared to the piratebay alternative.
Of course. My point is don't be self-righteous and use 'it's not available in my country' as justification for trying to make it moral.