Talk:Criticism of copyright

anti-DRM != Anticopyright
I have removed Defective by design from the list of groups mentioned as being "anti-copyright", as their is no evidence that this group is opposed to copyright per se, just the use of DRM as their homepage at http://www.defectivebydesign.org/about shows —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.174.255.69 (talk) 09:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Old discussion
I don't understand this article - isn't it possible to be anti-copyright without being an anarchist? To be honest, I'm struggling to understand what the article is trying to be about. If it's about anarchists views of copyright, it should probably be called Anarchists' views of copyright (although I doubt there is a consensus amongst anarchists on the matter). Can somebody enlighten me? --Camembert

Karl replied thus on my talk page:


 * re anti-copyright: It is an actual "copyright" statement. It is required because in may places items are copyright unless specifically stated otherwise. It would be a bit more popular than "some" anarchists. With most things anarchist, it is very difficult to tell how popular. My feeling is that it may be 75% or more popular in the small fanzine area of anarchism of 15 years ago. I do not know how popular it is today. Karl


 * Ah, I see - so you would find an "Anti-copyright" statement at the bottom of an article or something, kind of like a copyleft statement? Would it make sense to begin the article with something like "An anti-copyright statement is one which explicitly gives up any rights the owner may have under normal copyright laws"? That might make the subject of the article a bit clearer, I think (if it's accurate, that is). --Camembert


 * yes - typically such a statement is found in the masthead of a magazine, refering to its entire contents. It can also be attached to individual articles. It is like a copyleft statement. Ok, moving first bit of response to article.

Hi Camaebert- I was going to go to bed but thought I'd quickly reply- as I see it, anti copyright is an explicit political statement of opposition to the concept of 'copyright', as opposed to say, wikipedia, which is non copyright- perhaps a subtle distinction, but I would agree that one need not necessarily be an anarchist to support the idea of anti-copyright. In a way it's a statement about the ownership or freedom of ideas...

I used to put out fanzines/pamphlets and what have you years ago that displayed the 'anti-copyright' symbol ( a copyright 'C' in a circle with a cross through it), but being a capitalist running dog these days I do actually consider my work 'copyright' (such as my self published books or indeed the original essays from which many of my wiki artcles on organic gardening, permaculture, etc, are drawn) nowadays for reasons I won't go into now... Urg,clear as mud no doubt but I must get some kip- work tommorrow, yippee!!! quercus robur

I wrote this without reading the above:

This is one anarchist view of intellectual property. It's written in encyclopedic style, at least, but it is inaccurate in a couple of ways: The article should be incorporated into libertarian socialism (or anarchist communism or anarcho-communism, wherever it ends up). However, it could get lengthy, so it's own article would also be good. This view of intellectual property is really a "communist" one, in its true sense; however, many anarchist communist and communist works are still copyrighted, so there is some controversy and possible hypocrisy to write about. --Sam
 * I've already corrected the reference to Property is Theft as Proudhon's "slogan".
 * It is certainly not true that this represents everyone who calls him/herself an anarchist: especially not anarcho-capitalists, who hold the right of property above pretty much anything else, I think.


 * There are strong free market libertarian and anarcho-capitalist arguments against copyright. Narrow statements, such as yours, that imply anyone supportive of free market capitalism must be a socialist are pretty short-sighted.  Yes, anarcho-capitalists and free market libertarians pretty much universally agree on the importance of property rights -- but they don't all believe that thoughts, codified and distributed, necessarily remain the property of the person who recorded them in a durable form.  In fact, "intellectual property" is a misnomer created to promote a particular mindset with regard to copyright and patent law -- which isn't even related to property law out here in the real world.  Perhaps more importantly, copyright often actively interferes with actual property rights, as in the case of purchasing a CD and storing copyrighted data on it -- where some third party holding copyright to that data can employ force of law to prevent you from selling or giving away your CD. -- Apotheon (talk) 22:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

SchNEWS is @nti-copyright. It says it is "information for action! Copy and distribute!" -- Sam

Thanks very much to all for the above - I'm off to bed myself shortly, and won't be around tomorrow, but I'll stick my head in here Wednesday to see what's happening and if I can maybe improve things a little. I'm anti-copyright myself in theory - I was involved on the periphery of the Droplift Project and a lot of my musical work would not be very well received by the RIAA (unfortuantely, I have to eat, and so until the revolution, theory is not always equivalent to practice). However, I wasn't sure if this had an article's worth of material in it - too similar to copyleft, maybe; or else why not incorporate it into copyright. I'm still not sure about this now.

I'm still a bit troubled by this article (though it's better than it was) - it isn't really clear to me whether anti-copyright ought to be treated as a concept ("anti-copyright is the belief that all copyright laws should be scrapped") or as a kind of anti-license ("an anti-copyright statement is one which gives up all rights to a work under copyright laws"). That's more of a question of which angle the subject is approchaed from than anything else. I suppose one might try to come at from both angles at once. Anyway, I'm probably not making much sense - I'll go away, mull it over, and hopefully return with a clearer vision of what might be done here. --Camembert


 * I would think both - but in any case now that I have started this mess, I'm going to go away for a while and see what develops or disappears! Karl


 * But arnt copyrights socialism? In the sense they use law to control trade? I mean, just because something is supported by wealthy people doesn't mean it can't be extreme socialism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.183.59.211 (talk) 06:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Declaring non-copyright
The normal legal way to declare a work to be completely free of copyright—belonging to everyone, to do with as they please—is to declare it to be in the public domain. This is mentioned in the article.

If something is not clear from the article, find a reliable source that makes it clear, and by all means integrate the info into the article (with citation, of course). :) —überRegenbogen (talk) 15:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The value of entertainment
I read through the bullet points under "Anti-copyright movement" listing arguments against copyright and I didn't find any arguments along a line of thought that I've had (any suggestions on how to word this better, and does anyone else think this way?):

In the case of entertainment works, the existance of a work may not raise one's quality of life. Instead, it may only raise the bar of quality of life. For example, if someone makes a movie and I watch it, I may be no better off than if that movie wasn't made (I'll just find something else to do). On the other hand, if someone makes the movie but I can't afford it, I'm worse off because my friends who watched it are talking about it and I'm left out. So the work shouldn't be copyrightable or else its mere existance will make people who can't afford it worse off. Rather, people who have seen it should be able to share it with their friends freely.
 * This seems pretty easy to me. I think this line of reasoning is flawed.  By your definition, anything to which you do not have access, lowers your quality of life.  You choose an arbitrary focus on monetary issues (cost), but why?  What if there is something you simply cant grasp?  What if your friends are discussing string theory and you dont have the background in theoretical physics and math to comprehend it? Or something you physically cannot reach?  Your friends traveled to Kuala Lampur and saw something and you are unable to make that journey.  I would put forth that you tie access to cost because that fits your political agenda (whether you realize it or not).  Reality is that any concept of "equality" is artificial.  So a theoretical "utopian" society (utopian in the sense that those who dream of this would consider it utopia) can create an artificial leveling of access, but can it change the fact that someone may be physically stronger, or more attractive, than you?  In other words, under some vision of Utopian Socialism, do you really have any better chance with Scarlett Johanssen?  No, you dont.  So why is that different, at its core, than the fact that maybe you cant afford to see a movie today?  It isnt.  Its just that its very attractive and left-wing PC to attack monetary systems and acknowledging that they are really just the Darwinian outcome of an advanced species continued attempts to survive and thrive, would nullify an entire branch of philosophy that remains popular.


 * But even within the (narrow) scope of your base assumptions, that someone being denied access to what they cannot afford is a "wrong", I would argue that in short time there would simply be no works for you to share. The creation of a movie requires tremendous work and effort by numerous people.  If there is no possibility that laboring on a movie, or a book, or music, would help the artist to survive, at some point, they would need to devote their time to ensuring survival.  So you and your friends would have no movie to discuss and instead could devote that time to the labor camp.  I mean seriously... I find many folks who are anti-copyright really just dont want to have to pay for what they dont see as a physical object.  This may be a rude awakening for the deep thinkers who are truly trying to chart a course for a greater state of man in the future, but many of your supporters simply dont want to pay for music, or literature, or film because they feel there is a chance they wont have to (compared to a material object which is universally accepted - if grudgingly - as having some agreed upon value).


 * So I think it is ironic that one effect of the anti-copyright movement is a further devaluing of creative works which, indirectly, inflates the value of material objects (this *must* be the exact opposite of what an anti-copyright type would want) I would like to hear more thought from folks around how they expect artists to be fairly compensated under a system where their works can not be in any way protected.  For a hint, the ideas need to be a bit more realistic than a "universal art tax" or "the good will of man" Many artists and thinkers who have pushed hardest for the erradication of all forms of copyright are already wealthy and comfortable and now treat societal change on a grand scale as a hobby.  Either that, or like Stallman, they are radical ideologues who feel they can pass judgement on what quality of life someone should be allowed.  So for a Bob Dylan, sure, its easy to be anti-copyright.  For Stallman, it seems clear to him that is ok for ONE man (him) to determine what quality of life a programmer should be ALLOWED to have (the arrogance of that is mind-boggling - imagine if he were putting forth a right-wing viewpoint with that same degree of arrogance? he'd have been decried as a "fascist lunatic" long ago rather than hailed as a hero)


 * But there seems to be something particularly monstrous about telling someone who writes decent poetry and would like to do that all the time rather than work for Walmart, that they should be ashamed that they feel their poetry should have any monetary value and, instead, should be just happy to contribute to the "good of man". Especially when that message is coming from multi-millionaire artists with a guilt complex, college professors living fat off of $50k/year USD tuitions and someone like Stallman.


 * The idea that something is devalued by eliminating the viability of a business model based on legally enforced artificial scarcity to the point that one can't make a living at creating it is a common fallacy -- but it's a fallacy (specifically of a false dilemma) nonetheless. -- Apotheon (talk) 22:23, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Remember that wikipedia has a policy of No original research. Wikipedia isn't the right place to describe new ideas, but to describe (neutrally) the main arguments that others use. &mdash; Matt Crypto 09:39, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Marked pov
No attempt has even been made to balance this article with counter arguments. It is propoganda. I have serious doubts about whether this article should exist in its present form. Something like opinions on the value of copyright would be better. If it is just about a "movement" it should stick to history, and leave the pros and cons to a more broadranging article. Oliver Chettle 03:15, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * The only way I could possibly make this NPOV is by stubbing it. Compu  terjoe  11:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Add this to criticism- the no-copyright parties developed after torrenting became popular, so as a way of justification, not retaliation —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.85.153.162 (talk) 05:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a stab at this
It seems that the first use of "anti-copyright" described above is entirely the same as placing a work in the public domain. By relinquishing all rights to a work, the creator cannot enforce any right over its subsequent use (as would be the case under copyleft schemes. The second use of the term is just an opinion and a political statement, and thus eliminates anti-copyright from holding a place in the section describing the facts and details of copyright and related schemes. An anarchist can believe anything he wants, but this won't get any laws overturned. (Speaking of which, is anyone aware of an anarchist refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the law of gravitation?) User:Kradak
 * The word law has different meanings, see Law (disambiguation). Objecting to one meaning of a word does in no way require objecting to another meaning of the same word.

Situationists
Isn't the article most incomplete without mentioning Debord and the SI? And waht about the history? Can somebody volunteer a candidate for the first use of an explicit anti-copyright notice? Debord put 'All texts published in Potlatch can be reproduced, adapted or quoted without any mention of the source'' in Potlach, which was published 1954-1957. --Pjacobi 18:07, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Stop Curps From Vandalising This Article
Curps is keep inserting POV into this article and refuse to discuss. Amnesity 09:17, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * This is the return of the old anti-Alkivar troll, creating armies of sockpuppets, targeting Warez and related articles. He was active a few months ago and now has returned, same old story.  A new twist is involvement in Wikitruth.  Also vandalizing some math articles for no good reason. -- Curps 09:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

busking?!?
"it is likely that popular artists will still be able to make a living by means of advertising and product promotion, as they do at present or perhaps by busking, if that is the only option open to them." what on earth were u thinking whenever [whoever] wrote that? i think britney spears (or popular artist X) would still do stadium tours and concerts if there were no copyright, rather than sitting on a street corner with a guitar and a cap for the loose change of passers by.


 * The only difference being that Britney would no longer have to bother paying the authors of the songs she uses for their work. Yeah, that'd be great :P.  But I agree with you, this article really does suck right now.  It's so full of unreferenced personal opinion and unbacked bias that I think I just became a convinced supporter of copyright from reading it.  Fortunately, I'm sure I'll get over it soon enough.  I'm certain there are good arguments for abolishing copyright.  I'm equally certain they are not in this article, or at least not presented in a convincing way.Chaleur (talk) 15:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Cost of enforcing copyright
How much money does the government (e.g. courts, police) spend on investigating cases of alleged copyright infringement and prosecuting them?

Copyleft and creative commons is not anti copyright
I am concerned about the introduction to this article that states that creative commons and copyleft are forms of anti-copyright, this is not the case.

Creative commons for example relays very much on copyright law to achieve it’s aims, as do many copyleft schemes (GNU, etc.). These schemes form legally binding contracts (Creative Commons licenses have been upheld in court see: http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6052292.html ). Copyleft could not exist without copyright and whilst it’s objectives are often misinterpreted to be in conflict with copyright (freedom of information vs the protection of operation is debate within, not outside copyright) they, these licenses, all assert ownership of some degree (CC the moral right of the authour) and are singing from the same hymn sheet no matter how out of tune they may sound.

To be truly anti-copyright the scheme, in my opinion, would have to address (or fail to address as the case may be) the rights of ownership with regard to IPR. --DeepVeinInsomnia 09:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. GPL and the many licenses it inspired are meaningless without copyright.  They don't belong in an "Anti-copyright" article, nor does the EFF, or CC.  --AC 06:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed, these are NOT the same things. 64.148.241.133 22:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think they are completely anti-copyright, but I think it's a safe assertion from reading their websites they don't agree on the state of copyright today. I changed the intro to reflect this. Masterhomer [[Image:Yin_yang.png|20px|]] 21:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

proposal to somehow rename this article?
The word "anti-copyright" sounds very POV to me, because anti is a very negative word, so it implies that anti-copyright movements or ideologies or people are negative or wrong. I can't think of a better title at the moment, but how about arguments against copyright or freedom from copyright or I don't know...--Sonjaaa 08:50, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * An Anti-copyright article should exist under that name, but only to describe the history, rationale and actions of those persons and groups who oppose all copyright on general principles. It should not describe groups or persons who do not oppose all copyright -- maybe 90% of the current text doesn't belong here.


 * As for to where what's salvageable of said 90% should go, neither of those titles suggested are satisfactory, because they're based on the same black&white fallacy ("they're either for it or against it") that colors the present article. --AC 06:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It should be called, "Oooh, that darned RIAA!!" Seriously, the article is in no way an encyclopedic entry defining or identifying a key concept. It is a thinly-disguised attempt at proselytizing the notion of removing intellectual property ownership. Look at the opening paragraph of the arguments in favor of anti-copyright: "The classic argument for personal copyright is to grant developers temporary monopolies over their works to encourage further development by giving the developer a source of income. Those against copyright suggest that income to a developer should be generated by other means, for several reasons..." That is a rather sophomoric staw-man attack. The entire thing is shot through with fallacy after fallacy. -Blutwulf

Eveolution in general or 'get with the program'
This article should in somehow mention evolution in everything as an example. I mean, do companies that produce cassette tapes have a right to use legal action against the cd? What about movie theaters that go empty, do they take legal action against the dvd or free shows? Or do bike creators get mad at people that develop motorcycles? What about newspapers and newsgroups/sites, 'snail-mail' and e-mail, glass bottles and soda cans, ... People should lay down arms when it regards to new things that work. In this case, humanity no longer wants to pay ridiculous prices for something they can hear on the radio for free anyway. Hasn't it always been so that new things are invented and old systems dissapear?

What about the hypocrisy of copyright, take the very first song ever to hit number 1 from 0 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart (Your not alone - Michael Jackson) which, after 12 years of fighting in the court, has turned out to be plagiarism. Song turned out to be made by two Belgian brothers instead. Ok sorry I'm rambling on about other things, but seriously, what is copyright then? Being the first one to 'license' something and gain big profits so no one dares to question you? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drakuun (talk • contribs) 17:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Didn't read the above in details:
Anti-Copyrightists are usually people who are affected negatively by it, these people are usually also anti-capitalistic, anti-WTO, and anti-globalization. For reasons, you might want to check out the critisism of WTO. -GW2005


 * I wonder where you get those ideas. Please source your statements about such correlations as "these people are usually also anti-capitalistic".  You might also want to mention what relevance that statement has to anything. -- Apotheon (talk) 22:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I doubt they are against capitalism, since copyrights are more socialist, considering how they are designed to control trade with law.66.183.59.211 (talk) 01:35, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Reduced output of work argument invalid
If one considers that an artist or author may at anytime choose to reduce their output for any arbitrary reason, the argument that without copyright, reduced output would follow as a consequence is moot. Artists may reduce output while there are strong copyright laws in existence because their work is being heavily traded and merchants are making profits or for any number of other reasons. Therefore the argument that copyright is needed to ensure more work is produced is not valid. - Shiftchange (talk) 21:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

criticism section
I've pared down the " Criticism of anti-copyright arguments" section. Before:

* Critics conjecture that in the absence of copyright authors and artists would be under-compensated for their work. As a direct result, they claim, many fewer new works would be created.

* Assertion that the ease of reproduction of intellectual works should not be taken as an excuse to legalize copyright infringement.

* Criticism of interference with fair use, such as may occur with DRM, should not be an excuse to discard copyright altogether.

After:

* without copyright authors might profit less from their work and create less of it.

This was soon reverted by Samuell, who comments "we need a better critisum section than what we have now".

The problem is that bullet items #2 & #3 weren't arguments or criticisms.

Item #2 is POV question-begging: "to legalize ... infringement" is a tautology, because the term "infringement" implies copyright violation, the very point in question. Translated without POV, item #2 might say "easy copying is not a reason to legalize copying" or more generally "easy X is not a reason to legalize X". Yet easy X isn't a reason to make X illegal either.

Item #3 translated without POV would be: "weaker fair use benefits are no reason to legalize (retaliatory?) copying." Which is logically equivalent to the trivial "higher taxes are no reason to abolish taxes". And "fair use" again begs the question because it presupposes copyright.

Item #1 needs no hedges like "Critics conjecture" or "As a direct result, they claim", since it's under the criticism section. As it stands #1 is more of an ancient no-attribution needed "pro-copyright" argument, rather than a criticism of the "anti-" camp. Such reasons probably belong more in a copyright article. --AC (talk) 07:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The whole of the new crit section was deleted by SasiSasi, who claims he "Removed unref material". Presumably SasiSasi believes only arguments of the form "Professor X argues that ... A & B, therefore C" are encyclopedic.   I think the crit was general and unoriginal enough not to need or benefit from referencing.  Arguments are not "facts", unless attributed; a common general argument seldom has any obvious canonical  reference, indeed a generality with specific reference borders on provincialism, at worst another way of logrolling for some favorite author or partisan source.


 * The article now is peppered with general arguments lead by hedges like "commentators have pointed out that...", "some groups, such as Hipatia, advance anti-copyright arguments in the name of 'freedom of knowledge' and argue that...", "It is argued that...", "A long standing argument against patents is...", "Recently anti-copyright arguments have been advanced with regards to...", etc. Needless words -- we should sum up and order the various arguments without introductions, and reference only those that are original or peculiar.


 * Constructive suggestions what to do about this welcome. I've no interest in revert wars, and SasiSasi, by not discussing large deletions beforehand, seems uninterested in pursuing consensus.  --AC (talk) 06:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It was not my intention to cause offence. The article was tagged as unref. for a long time (without anybody doing anything about it) and I tried to improve it: by adding a long string of ref. arguments and removing the unref sections. The article still needs a lot of work, and anybody is free to extend it (as this is Wikipedia). I am interested in consensus, and in creating referenced content in Articles. As per Wikipedia policy all content needs to be referenced and verifiable. If you feel that the A&B example is common sense (hence requires no ref) please feel free to add it back in. I am not claiming ownership over this article. What I tried to do is to create the basis for an article that does not need clean-up tags. I have tried to summarise and group arguments (e.g. in the name of freedom of knowledge), as well as providing cross ref to organisations and scholars that have contributed to the issue (which I am sure readers find useful for the purpose of finding out more information on the subject). There are a wide variety of arguments and angles taken up by anti-copyright advocates, hence the intention was to create a structure that allows for each of the arguments to be explored separately. As I said everybody is free to extend the article. --SasiSasi (talk) 20:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Possible GA reviewer
I'm thinking about reviewing this article but I'd like to warn the contributors and talk page watchers that I will very likely fail it in its current form. As of the current revision, I do not see a considerable amount of evidence that "anti-copyright" is a widely used term or taxonomy of thought nor do I see evidence that the myriad copyright reform and patent reform organizations listed can be gathered under this category. Anti-copyright, as described by a few of the sources linked, does not (in my opinion and in the opinion of some reputable sources in the industry and academia) accurate describe the various phenomena and groups assembled in this article. As such, it appears that a good portion is original research or original research by synthesis. Other portions of the article (e.g. the anti-patent part) appear to grossly misrepresent the state of patent protests and litigation as well as mainstream and fringe views on the subject. My recommendation is that this article be withdrawn from GAN, stripped to verifiable claims from reliable sources and built anew with a very limited scope (reflecting the limited scope of the term "anti copyright"). If it is desired, I can review this article and provide some specific points of criticism, but it is almost assured that I will fail it. Protonk (talk) 04:31, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That's weird. Didn't even know it was nominated. Yes, it should certainly fail as-is. Cool Hand Luke 07:50, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * yes it would be helpful if the article was reviewed against the Good article criteria, rather than one editors view of the subject. In its previous form the article was almost entirely unreferenced and subject to edit wars, as everybody wanted to shape the article according to their view of what anti-copyright is. Regardless of whether the article will fail as GA or not, what it does attempt in the moment is to explain the arguments of various groups (in different countries) or causes that are associated with anti-copyright (referenced). In one area the article certainly falls short and that is in terms of pre-internet anti-copyright arguments. Regarding the patent, this is not an anti-patent artcile and merely aims to give an overview of the arguments used, anti-patent movement with regards to medicine really should have its own article.

Also, the anti-copyright lobby has for a long time and to some extent still is outside the mainstream, so by definition you don’t find many anti-copyright sources that are peer reviewed and approved by the great and good… but as far as I know this is not the sole criteria for reliable sources.

The GA criteria are: A good article is—

Well written: (a) the prose is clear and the spelling and grammar are correct; and (b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, jargon, words to avoid, fiction, and list incorporation.[1] Factually accurate and verifiable: (a) it provides references to all sources of information, and at minimum contains a section dedicated to the attribution of those sources in accordance with the guide to layout;[2] (b) at minimum, it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons;[2] and (c) it contains no original research. Broad in its coverage: (a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic;[3] and (b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias. Stable: it does not change significantly from day-to-day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.[4] Illustrated, if possible, by images:[5] (a) images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content; and (b) images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.[6]

--SasiSasi (talk) 10:10, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of the GA criteria. And It doesn't "fall short".  It conflates topics and groups who aren't "anti-copyright" into a label without a secondary source doing it.  I'm also not saying that all sources need to be peer reviewed in academic publications, where did that come from?  Don't assume I'm hostile just because I'm saying this article will fail.  Just please take my suggestion to heart that this article should be re-written to include only "anti-copyright" ideas or groups (and not "patent reform", "copyright reform" or Web 2.0, etc.).  Anti-patent is fine, so long as the groups and topics the article is writing about are anti-patent and not patent reform. Protonk (talk) 15:25, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "And it doesn't "fall short" - you suggested in your first response that you would review it within the GA process and it would fail - ?


 * " It conflates topics and groups who aren't "anti-copyright" into a label without a secondary source doing it." - One important point to note is that this article does not claim that all listed scholars or groups are anti-copyright, they are listed under anti-copyright arguments and only specific anti-copyright relevant arguments they may have made are included in the article. The original thought here was to move away from "he sais/she sais" (the way the article looked before). Previously all possible anti-copyright arguments were simply listed in point form, without any reference to who has made them in which context. There are a number of very different anti-copyright arguments, and any suggestions on a structure that captures this is welcome.
 * I believe this is in line with Wikipedia guidelines which state: "The need for citations is especially important when writing about opinions held on a particular issue. Avoid weasel words where possible, such as, "Some people say ..." Instead, make your writing verifiable: find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a reputable publication in which they express that opinion. Remember that Wikipedia is not a place for expressing your own opinions or for original research."


 * Inclusion of arguments: this is an article about anti-copyright, hence I assume that one reasonable criteria for inclusion of an argument is an anti-copyright argument, or if a group or argument is named as anti-copyright (e.g. creative commons has been named anti-copyright by secondary sources - see New York Times describing Creative Commons as "the Creative Commons anti-copyright project", in response to which CC has outlined why they are not anti-copyright)... hence inclusion or exclusion in this case is not a simple matter of secondary sources. I think the main issue there is that "copyright" is a well defined term (i.e. see copyright article) and usually refers to the prevalent exclusive rights sort of license. When CC argues they are not anti-copyright they actually re-define "copyright" as any license that awards some rights (not necessarily exclusive rights). - in the intro it states "Anti-copyright refers to the complete or partial opposition to prevalent copyright laws" to define the scope of the article, but I will insert a definition of "copyright" to make this more clear.


 * "I'm also not saying that all sources need to be peer reviewed in academic publications, where did that come from?" from your claim in your first comment "in my opinion and in the opinion of some reputable sources in the industry and academia"... You appear to imply that the sources used in this article are not “reputable”. Wikipedia guidelines don’t define reputable, but state that sources need to be reliable, and Wikipedi acknowledges peer review as one definition of reliable sources. I think all sources are within the guidelines of Wikipedia . There could be concerns regarding self published sources, however these sources have been used little and in most cases to quote the argument in a transparent way. Also, your opinion is not a reliable source.


 * "this article should be re-written to include only "anti-copyright" ideas or groups (and not "patent reform", "copyright reform" or Web 2.0, etc.). as said before "copyright" is a defined term that does not denote any type of license that gives the author some rights over their work. The Bern convention which is an internationally binding treaty on copyright states that the author "shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification." The fact that copyright denotes a particular type of license is also explicit in the automatic copyright protection.. As this article points out in the article, some groups or arguments denoted as "anti-copyright" are not anti-copyright per se in that they do not necessarily oppose licenses granting authors some rights, but because "copyright" is a particular type of license these groups are anti-copyright. I will look at the language again to avoid any kind of confusion. Now I guess there needs to be a threshold, otherwise any argument that is in the slightest critical of copyright would be included. Looking at the article again I think it includes either arguments against the fundamental principles/assumption of copyright, or arguments that copyright is redundant or inappropriate with regards to new information technology and Web2.0, I will change the structure to reflect this, which should take away from the wishi washi feel the article at parts has.
 * Regarding Web2.0 I will see if some of the section can be moved to the Web2.0 article
 * "Anti-patent is fine, so long as the groups and topics the article is writing about are anti-patent and not patent reform." That is a tricky one, mainly because secondary sources have described campaigns against software patents as well as pharmaceutical patents. Patent (industrial property) and copyright two types of [intellectual property]], according to the WIPO. Right now anti-patent redirects to anti-copyright, and since there is not that much material on the issue I am not sure how appropriate it is to create an anti-patent article. However, I will insert the ref on the relation of copyright and patent to make it more obvious why anti-patent is in this article. There might be a case to rename the article "Anti-intellectual property" to account for the fact that it covers both anti-copyright and anti-patent.--SasiSasi (talk) 11:07, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Cartoon
Objective3000 removed the cartoon I inserted and gave as a reason: “''A fat man surrounded by moneybags saying human rights are worth nothing is NOT illustrative. This is way out of line.''”

Wikipedia doesn't make moral judgments on cartoons. The cartoon depicts a typical point of view of the copyright-opponents. It is a source of information on what the anti-copyright-movement is about. To give you an extreme example, this image is also included in an article, even so it is antisemitic. Just because an image is included in an article doesn't mean that Wikipedia favors its point of view. Please don't WP:MORALIZE. --Church of emacs (Talk) 15:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Why is this image notable? Has it been referred to in a reliable source? Shreevatsa (talk) 16:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's by a notable cartoonist, and was displayed on the main page of a hyper-notable website for some time. It portrays the opinions of anti-copyright protestors, in an article about anti-copyright thought, and it is free. That's exactly what an image should be. J Milburn (talk) 16:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you define "for some time?" I think it was a couple days. This does not compare to a famous image on antisemitism from the 19th Century.Objective3000 (talk) 16:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it has been on the main page for one or two weeks. --Church of emacs (Talk) 17:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't imagine why it would belong in an encyclopedia article unless the cartoon itself was important to the subject as a whole. I agree with its removal. Protonk (talk) 18:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, the article is about the anti-copyright movement. You can't expect that it won't describe any concepts that object to the idea of copyright. It might be appropriate to include a section "Criticism" to make sure that WP:UNDUE is kept in mind. But this has nothing to do with the inclusion of this image. --Church of emacs (Talk) 19:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The image is free, and illustrates the subject of the section/article. Free images do not need to be "notable" in any way, only illustrative. J Milburn (talk) 19:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I can find nothing in the text about copyright holders hating children, hating human rights or anything "illustrated" by the cartoon. It was on the Pirate Bay site for a couple days. Before that there was a cartoon making fun of Tom Cruise.Objective3000 (talk) 20:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, not really illustrative, and looks like undue weight. Cool Hand Luke 20:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * @Objective3000: The difference between a cartoon about Tom Cruise and this cartoon is that this cartoon fits into the article "Anti-copyright".
 * @Cool Hand Luke: Could you please elaborate why you believe this image is not illustrative in the context of the point of view of copyright opponents? And I can't really see the difference in terms of undue weight between citing the arguments of copyright opponents in the form of text and citing their arguments in a form of a cartoon. Both represent the POV of a group of people which is the subject of the article. What is the key difference between the image and - for example - a text that describes the image? --Church of emacs (Talk) 20:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * An image mocking Tom Cruise, presented by a major organisation known to be an enemy of Tom Cruise, would fit right into Anti-Tom Cruise. And yes, Church of emacs took the words out of my mouth- we present arguments in writing, so why not present them visually as well? Especially when we have a free, published image created by a notable individual? J Milburn (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I see no argument in the article that copyright-holders hate children and hate human rights. Again, I do not see how this cartoon is illustrative of the article. It is an offensive, ridiculous characature -- not an argument.Objective3000 (talk) 21:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think the author genuinely believes that copyright holders hate children and human rights. Does it really matter? It's embellishment. The main thrust of the image is the perceived ridiculousness of people trying to protect copyrights online, and that's what the image is included to show. I see no mention in the text of the topiary! Remove the image! J Milburn (talk) 21:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If the author doesn't even believe what it portrays, it is absurd to include it.Objective3000 (talk) 21:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It is not presented as fact, it is presented as a caricature. The author may or may not believe the underlying political message, but it is clear that at least some on the anti-copyright side of the fence do, and see this as representative of their views. Illustrating their views on an article about their views is clearly appropriate. Could you please stop saying that this image is about hating children and human rights? It clearly isn't. J Milburn (talk) 22:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If you want me to stop saying the image is about hating children and human rights, then pick an image that is not about hating children and human rights. Why do you insist on adding an offensive cartoon about hating children and human rights?Objective3000 (talk) 23:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You don't get out of NPOV by having an article like this one. "anti-copyright" should cover the movement associated with anti-copyright, it shouldn't have to repeat or amplify their claims. A cartoon like that one might be appropriate in a section or articles on "perceptions of copyright", but that would still be a stretch. And yes, a picture carries more weight than words, especially a political cartoon, which isn't designed to be a narrow and neutral summary of positions (rather, they are often designed to be the opposite). So I don't think it is fair to say "I can't really see the difference in terms of undue weight between citing the arguments of copyright opponents in the form of text and citing their arguments in a form of a cartoon." There is a world of difference. Protonk (talk) 23:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Erm, how? We're able to illustrate arguments, and you're saying we shouldn't? J Milburn (talk) 18:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * What does the cartoon illustrate? This article isn't about the RIAA/MPAA; it mentions nothing about company executives being greedy, or whatever. The only tenuous connection I can imagine is that Pirate Bay vaguely supports both the positions in this article and in the cartoon. The cartoon does not illustrate any argument the article is about; it is not even an argument; the content of the cartoon is even entirely consistent with a pro-copyright, anti-(**AA/stiff copyright infringement laws) viewpoint. Without going into the question of whether the cartoon is appropriate anywhere at all, I'd say it is not relevant to this article. Shreevatsa (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I can see the consensus is quite clearly against me here, so I'm happy for the cartoon to stay out of the article. Consider me out of the debate. J Milburn (talk) 18:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) I'm not saying that the cartoon is convincing or that it isn't, I'm not saying that the cartoon contains many good arguments or it doesn't, but it contains widespread beliefs in the anti-copyright movement. The cartoon is not only about RIAA or MPAA, the main theme is copyright and therefor it fits into this article --Church of emacs (Talk) 19:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You're missing his point (which is one I agree with). His point is not that it's a bad or unconvincing comic; it's simply not relevant. It plainly criticizes industry bad guys, but it doesn't really illustrate opposition to copyright in general. Cool Hand Luke 20:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the anti-copyright movement sees its great enemy in the media industry. And thats understandable, as the media industry has most of the copyrights and defends their copyrights through DRM, copy protection, suing after copyright infringements and so on. They are the obvious and the big opponent of all who wish to destroy copyright. Of course, there might be a philosophical part of the anti-copyright movement that rejects copyright for theoretical reasons, but the main focus of practical actions has always been on the industry. Therefor, I agree that this comic might not cover _all_ parts of the anti-copyright movement, but it still covers a major part. I'm not suggesting to replace the text by the cartoon, so I think that there is nothing to worry, copyrights opponents who don't focus on the industry still may get enough attention in the article. --Church of emacs (Talk) 21:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, this comic doesn't cover any of the anti-copyright movement, because the defining characteristic of the movement is... being opposed to copyrights! It would be like adding an ordinary political cartoon making fun of George W. Bush to anti-Americanism. Yeah, a lot of people with anti-American sentiments didn't like Bush, but such a cartoon isn't really about their ideology. Cool Hand Luke 21:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * How can we describe a political opinion or even a political movement without describing their arguments (and possibly counterarguments)? Do you think the article Animal rights should contain no arguments but only facts that don't relate to arguments (for example lists of campaigns, lists of supporters and organizations, etc.)? This is absurd. Of course, if we have an article about a political subject the arguments of both sides should be presented. If the article weight is undue, that is because there are not many counter-arguments but not because of this image. --Church of emacs (Talk) 19:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think Animal rights should have a still from the south park episode depicting PETA members having sex with animals. The article isn't a discussion page.  It isn't an editorial page.  Unless the cartoon itself is a topic of discussion or is a significant viewpoint, we should be careful of using it.  As I said above, political cartooning is the diametric opposite of encyclopedic summary.  We aim to be neutral and factual, and they aim to be provocative and figurative.  That doesn't make political cartoons bad, it just means that we have to be careful when we choose to integrate them into articles.  Also, there is no equal time provision on wikipedia.  NPOV doesn't mean repeating one sides arguments uncritically and then offering an opposing side the same space to present their arguments uncritically.  That's a newsman's definition of neutrality and it sucks.  We try to find and summarize sources which represent mainstream views on a subject in a neutral fashion--wherever possible, we attempt to pick neutral sources.  It is a last ditch effort to source claims from an obviously partisan source, not a preferred state. Protonk (talk) 19:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Summarizing is okay, but we must not judge arguments. --Church of emacs (Talk) 20:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe that this cartoon expresses a “significant viewpoint″ of the anti-copyright movement (as opposed to the South Park episode).
 * “NPOV doesn't mean repeating one sides arguments uncritically and then offering an opposing side the same space to present their arguments uncritically.” – really? But if you object to the idea of citing arguments, then instead you have three options: (a) you make up new arguments (violates WP:OR), (b) you say which arguments make sense and which don't (violates WP:NPOV), (c) you do not include arguments in the article at all (which is non-preferable as a major part of the subject is not described). Those are the alternatives and therefor my interpretation of NPOV has always been: NPOV means (1) to describe only arguments that have a citation/can be attributed to someone, (2) not to judge arguments, (3) include arguments so that the whole article is balanced.
 * Let's take an example. Let's say I have to write a biography of a politician, John Doe (random politician).  I have three kinds of sources at my disposal (for simplicity): johndoesucks.com, johndoeisgreatomgomg.com and the New York Times.  I may, if I want the article to be neutral, source half to the hatchet job and half to the hagiography or I may source the bulk to the New York Times.  However, if I source half to a site which praises Doe uncritically and half to a site which reviles him, I have no good way of giving the reader a balanced and neutral summary--the article simply becomes a competing series of claims and counterclaims filled with "howevers" and caveats.  This is how a good deal of news organizations do it, and it makes for bad prose and misleading articles.  Good articles on wikipedia do not do this.  Take a look at global warming, a featured article.  We could source half to Greenpeace and half to the Global Climate Coalition, but the article would be a train wreck.  Those sources have been minimalized in favor of neutral sources (mostly from peer reviewed publications).  We don't include our judgment of the arguments or sources explicitly in the article but judgment of sources is unavoidable.  Selection among sources is unavoidable.  In most cases judgment and selection are preferable to indiscriminate portrayal of a particular viewpoint.
 * Either way, this cartoon isn't simply a source. It is an image, and one designed to persuade.  What is the reason for including it in the article?  To illustrate the arguments made, or to persuade the reader?  Please take onboard the comments being made that point out the non-illustrative features of the cartoon.  I don't think those have been answered fully. Protonk (talk) 03:36, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This reasoning is orthogonal to the reason I oppose the comic, but it's also a very good point. Much better to let neutral sources describe the arguments than construct the arguments ourselves from primary source examples of the argument. (And as I explain above, I don't think the comic actually presents an anti-Copyright message.) Cool Hand Luke 21:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your elaborate answer, Protonk. I do not fully agree, as TPB is part of the movement and therefor part of what the article is describing (unlike johndoesucks.com). However, I now see a valid argument against including the image. And while I still believe that the image should be included, I can understand that others asses the arguments against the image as more important. Therefor I accept the consensus that the image will not be included in this article (this view does not apply to the article The Pirate Bay) --Church of emacs (Talk) 18:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think I've commented clearly there, but I do agree that a far stronger argument for inclusion can be made on tpb's page than here. Protonk (talk) 18:52, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Economic arguments section
I think the "Creative Commons" section is more related to culture/social arguments: a passing reference to unspecified possible alternatives to current business practices does not make an economic argument. The file sharing section in the economic arguments is relevant, and could (should?) evolve into a discourse on "public goods". Ratbertovich (talk) 19:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with you, and have moved it to the cultural arguments section accordingly. Thanks, Shreevatsa (talk) 04:42, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Non-originality
This section is about ideas which cannot be copyrighted. The quote is not relevant to the article.Objective3000 (talk) 13:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Libertarians
This article needs a bit more consideration of the widespread libertarian opposition to copyright, at least so as not to give the impression that the anti-copyright movement is entirely socialistic. I added the non-scarcity argument, but it needs to more work (I don't have the time at the moment, unfortunately). Vox Imperatoris (talk) 13:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Libertarian philosophy supports intellectual property rights. Any political philosophy that opposes intellectual property rights, yet purports to be a "Libertarian" philosophy, is almost certainly a version of Anarchism: Libertarian Socialism, left-Libertarianism, etc. The confusion is the result of historical etymology of the word "Libertarian", which used to be used as a synonym of "Anarchist", until the Second World War. 219.89.249.161 (talk) 10:14, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Splitting article.
Most of the groups in this article can't be described as "anti-copyright", per se, only a very few. Many are in favor of copyleft of software (which is in favor of copyright, fundamentally, in that it uses copyright to keep source code free, while a system entirely without copyright could still limit the freedom to tinker, by allowing distribution of binaries without source), fundamental reforms of the time period of monopolies granted by copyright law (Lessig and others) while not abandoning them all together, reimposing the derivation of profit standard for infringement to exist, allowing creators to voluntarily modify the scope and the nature of the rights exerted (Creative Commons), reforming DRM by removing the use of the state's coercive power in preventing disablement of such, etc.

I would split this article into "anti-copyright" to deal with groups who are opposed to all copyright, as well as theoretical and practical arguments made by these individuals, and "copyright reform" to deal with groups that are against the copyright status quo but are not against copyright all together.

What do others think?Katana0182 (talk) 04:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree the distinction should be made and a split should occur. - Shiftchange (talk) 11:48, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Austrian perspective
There seems to be a crucial misconception on the Austrian view on IP and copyright in this article. Rothbard as an example: Rothbard distinguishes between patents and copyrights. He argues against patents but for copyright. He states that patents are illegitimate because they are enforced by the state on an arbitrary basis, namely, that the first person to invent something gets the monopoly on it. If one invents something patented independently he is prohibited to earn the fruits of his work which is unjust. Copyrights are legitimate because they are a form of contract: If A produces a mousetrap and sells it with a (C) sign then it means that A sells the mousetrap with the permission of limited usage, that one cannot create replicas etc, which is fully legitimate as it is voluntary contract between buyer and seller. There is no single "Austrian" view on IP and copyrights. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cognaq (talk • contribs) 18:26, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Removal of links in the see also section
In an edit summary I was asked o explain my removal of two wiki links in the see also section, namely Anarcho-communism and Antitrust (redirects to Competition law). Too many links is not helpful and will damage navigability, my reasoning behind chopping out these two is:


 * There are numerous forms of anarchism and communism (Category:Anarchism by form, Category:Communism), from my understanding most anarchists and communists are anti copyright, thus not a reason to link any one of them specifically. In addition, multiple other political, and non-political movements are anti copyright; listing them all simply isn't possible.


 * As for Competition law, the article only mentions "copy" twice: Copyright misuse in a navbox, and List of countries' copyright length in the see also section. From the lead: "Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, are laws that promote or maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct.". This does not seems like a sufficient reason to link it from this article.

I hope this made my reasoning clearer. jonkerz♠ 02:15, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No reply in +2 weeks, re-removing links, jonkerz♠ 20:42, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Intellectual Monopoly
The entire Intellectual Monopoly section is a quote, and more importantly, a biased quote. This should be replaced with actual content, written from a neutral point of view.-Zyrath (talk) 22:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

The claimed losses to the industry in the criticism section
In the section "Criticism", it is said:

"According to a study by the Institute for Policy Innovation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy think tank, piracy of Copyright material costs the U.S. economy $5.5 billion in annual earnings among U.S. workers, as well as $837 million in lost annual tax revenue and $20.5 billion in lost annual output to all US industries. Furthermore it estimates that piracy costs the U.S 141,030 jobs, two thirds of which are outside the film industry."

However, these studies may be dubious. See: A $13 billion fantasy: latest music piracy study overstates effect of P2P ("First and foremost, it appears to fall into the 'illicit downloads == lost sales' fallacy" ) Now, I know they are speaking of a different article by the IPI, but the approaches used in the one cited in the Wikipedia article are the same.

However, at this point, I'm not necessarily recommending removing the text, as it is a criticism raised. Shrewmania (talk) 10:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know how 'nonpartisan' IPI is, but you are quoting an opinion piece by an editor of Ars Technica, whose WP article says writes in an opinionated style. Unfortunately, there exist a large number of poor sources in the WP articles on this subject.Objective3000 (talk) 12:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * While being opinionated doesn't necessarily mean blatant falsehoods, I can see how it's not as good as an NPOV. In any case, would you say that the IPI citation is reliable or unreliable itself? Personally, I believe it leans towards the latter. (but even if it's unreliable, see my comment above ("However, at this point...")). Shrewmania (talk) 05:40, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Also, by "there exist a large number of poor sources," do you mean to say that on both sides of the argument sources are poor, or just on the pro-IP or anti-IP side of the debate? Shrewmania (talk) 05:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I am for removing the whole IPI paragraph, and not on the credibility basis (though IMHO any source which is founded by Dick Armey and claims to be non-partisan, is not really credible), but on the basis that IPI research claims losses from piracy, and might be relevant only in the article on piracy; inferring that losses from piracy have relation to anti-copyright, is an invalid WP:SYN, promoting point of view which is not in original source. Per my interpretation of WP:SYN, references really belong to anti-copyright page, when sources explicitly refer to anti-copyright (or usefulness/problems with copyright laws), anything else is invalid WP:SYN. And even if anti-copyright and piracy is the same thing (which I don't think is true), then such references still don't belong here, instead piracy and anti-copyright pages should be merged. Ipsign (talk) 08:14, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

The Gray Album
Couldn't it be said that the right to create mashups is an extension or subset of the right to quote? 68.173.113.106 (talk) 02:58, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

"Illegal file sharing" vs. "file sharing"
An IP editor has added the word "illegal" to the description of this image four times so far. Every time it has been removed, but we should resolve this before it turns into an edit war.

I (and apparently several other editors) prefer the version without "illegal". It doesn't really add any information; as far as I can tell, it's only there to take a stand against file sharing. The wording without "illegal" appears more neutral. Obviously, though, 74.108.115.191 (talk) really feels that the word "illegal" belongs there.

Here's what other pages using this image have as I'm writing this:


 * Copyright infringement of software - "Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing, 2006."
 * File sharing - "Demonstrators protesting The Pirate Bay raid, 2006."
 * Intellectual property - "Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing, 2006."
 * Legal aspects of file sharing - "Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing, 2006."
 * Philosophy of copyright - "Anti-copyright demonstration in Stockholm, Sweden, 2006."
 * Timeline of file sharing - "Pro-file sharing demonstration in Sweden after the police raid against The Pirate Bay, 2006."
 * Warez - "Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing, 2006."

All of these look better and more neutral to me than the version with "illegal", but apparently someone thinks otherwise. What's the consensus here - should the image say "file sharing" or "illegal file sharing", or something else completely? Sideways713 (talk) 13:42, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Using "illegal" is too negative a connotation and implies that file sharing is illegal, which of course it is not. "File sharing is not illegal. It only becomes illegal when users are sharing content, such as music, that is protected by copyrights." Keri (talk) 13:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * First, the statement that an IP editor has added the word “illegal” four times is false. The word has been there for a long time. The IP editor reverted attempts to remove it. Second, the word is not a part of the article text, it is a part of an image caption. That image is specifically a demonstration in support of an illegal file sharing site. Note the pirate flag and the fact that the demonstration was in support of people that have been convicted of crimes. The protest was in support of “sharing content, such as music, that is protected by copyrights.” Now, if you object to the use of the word illegal in the Anti-Copyright article, and believe that the article is NOT about illegal file-sharing, then I suggest that you remove the image of people specifically supporting illegal actions and find a more appropriate image.74.108.115.191 (talk) 15:03, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Pirate Bay is not an illegal site. The pirate flag is not illegal. Being anti-copyright is not illegal. Demonstrating in support of people convicted of crimes is not illegal. The protest was not "in support of “sharing content, such as music, that is protected by copyrights.” According to The Pirate Bay raid the demonstration was "against the police action [and] organized by Piratbyrån and the Pirate Party in collaboration with the Liberal Youth, Young Greens and Young Left parties." Keri (talk) 15:23, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * The founders of TPB were all sentenced to prison in that trial. The judge specifically stated that the site itself was illegal. The "police action" was to arrest criminals, as vindicated by the results of the trial and appeals. You have now again changed the text without consensus in violation of WP !rules. I suggest that you look at your own POV issues and stop removing long-standing text. If you don't want this article to be about illegal file sharing, then remove the image of a protest in favor if sharing copyrighted material in violation of the law.74.108.115.191 (talk) 15:36, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I changed the article about 2.5 hours ago, before this discussion started. You have changed it while the discussion is still in progress. The article is about "anti-copyright", not illegal file sharing. I suggest you are conflating the two issues and attempting to make a point. Keri (talk) 15:51, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I reverted to the text that existed and suggested going to the talk page before again making this removal. You then re-edited. I am not conflating the two issues. I am resetting the text back to its accurate state. The image is conflating the issues.74.108.115.191 (talk) 17:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Long-standing text? The image was added on 11 February 2009 with the caption "Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing, 2006." and happily stayed that way until you changed it here on 26 July 2012. It's been at "file sharing" a lot longer than it has at "illegal file sharing".
 * Secondly, whether "file sharing" - generally or in this specific case - is illegal is secondary. The wording "in support of illegal file sharing" gives a clearly negative view of the supporters and thus the more neutral wording "in support of file sharing" should be preferred.
 * Thirdly, please stop edit warring. Sideways713 (talk) 15:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * The text has existed for nine months. An effort is being made to reduce the accuracy and a claim has been made that I am the one that keeps trying to change the article.
 * The supporters in the image WERE demonstrating in support of people convicted of aiding illegal file-sharing. If this is not what the article is about, remove the image and stop trying to claim it isn’t what it is.
 * I am not edit-warring. Keri is. He is the one that AGAIN tried to change the text AFTER the suggestion to take it to the talk page.
 * Seriously, if you are making these edits in support of LEGAL file-sharing, you are hurting your own case by keeping an image of a protest in support of ILLEGAL file sharing and inaccurately labeling it. The image is of the Pirate Bay trial with a pirate flag. Piracy is illegal. The site was ruled ILLEGAL. The defendants were convicted. File-sharing, in and of itself, is not illegal. Why conflate the case by including an image of a protest in support of convicted pirates and inaccurately labeling it? This suggests that all file-sharers share the beliefs of pirates. They do not.74.108.115.191 (talk) 17:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not making any edits in support of file sharing, whether legal or illegal. If I did I would probably deserve a topic ban. What I'm supporting is Wikipedia's core policy of neutral point of view.
 * And trying to accuse someone else of edit-warring when you've changed the wording five times and he's changed it twice doesn't appear very constructive. Sideways713 (talk) 17:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "Organized and active opposition to modern copyright law and practices" =/= "support of illegal file sharing." Omitting the word "illegal" - which was added by you without prior discussion - in the image caption maintains a NPOV. Keri (talk) 17:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That is an obvious whitewash of TPB, and the word was added nine months ago. I agree that “Organized and active opposition to modern copyright law and practices" =/= "support of illegal file sharing."  But, the protest was in favor of illegal file-sharing. So, it suggests exactly what you claim is not true, and that is reinforced by omission of a critical fact – an odd thing for an encyclopedia to do. Is this image illustrative or not? If not, remove it. But don’t suggest that the demonstration was in support of a legal site when the judge ruled it wasn’t. Inaccuracy is not NPOV.74.108.115.191 (talk) 18:29, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The protest was not in support of illegal file sharing in particular, and omitting "illegal" does not imply "legal". But since we apparently can't agree on what the neutral wording here is, a natural question to ask would be... is there any wording we can all agree meets WP:NPOV?

These, as noted, have been used elsewhere:


 * "Anti-copyright demonstration in Stockholm, Sweden, 2006."
 * "Demonstrators protesting The Pirate Bay raid, 2006."
 * "Pro-file sharing demonstration in Sweden after the police raid against The Pirate Bay, 2006."

Would you have problems with using one of those as the image caption? Sideways713 (talk) 18:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I find all three agreeable. Keri (talk) 19:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I have now been threatened by Keri of banishment for reverting attempts to remove nine month old, accurate text. Although I have no question that this would not stand if pushed, and have never lost an escalation here despite over 1,000 edits, I am leaving this discussion as I simply have no time to deal with such nonsense. Such is why so many have left WP. I point you to the three month-old synthesis statement at the top of the article. This article is largely based on synthesis and is obviously slanted to anyone not wholly swallowing one side’s beliefs. Oddly, anyone that attempts to bring balance is accused of bias. I have been pro code sharing since before most of you have been alive and have shared massive amounts of my own code over decades. Of course, my own beliefs are not relevant. My reverts were based on a minor attempt to remove one obvious bias in the numerous, repetitive, one-sided, WP articles related to copyright. Article update at WP has been stagnating over the last couple of years. Some of these articles still point to a study on copyright long-since recalled by its own authors. Articles on the TPB founders are all wildly out of date and now sadly inaccurate. As someone above pointed out, many articles include the same image – an image of a protest in support of criminals convicted of “commercial” copyright violations (commercial under Swedish law meaning for-profit), without bothering to point out that their actions were illegal or for-profit. If you guys want to push such concepts; supporting criminals convicted of stashing millions in off-shore accounts (verified by court audits) by criminal violation of the rights of others, is not likely to be effective. It just makes WP look ridiculous. Do you really not believe that there is not a better way to present this argument, if that is your desire? Or to present a NPOV, if it is not? These articles should be combined and balanced and refs to criminals convicted of commercial rights violations should be removed. That’s my POV.74.108.115.191 (talk) 00:39, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Use Demonstrators protesting The Pirate Bay raid, 2006.. The sources for that images is quiet clear. The demonstration was against three major topics: The claim of illegal influence on an police investigation by an other country, as reported by news papers at the time. The shutting down of physical close but unrelated servers including those used by news reporters. And thirdly, the abnormal larger use of police budget on minor crime, as cases like murder/mass-rape has a average of far less budget and police resources. Neither of those 3 has much to do with supporting illegal anything, and more to do with the political details of that case. Belorn (talk) 12:04, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Forcehimes reference
The Forcehimes paper, written by a student, appears to be unknown and unread except for the person that added it to two at least Wikipedia articles. There is no discussion of it elsewhere. It has no weight. Wikipedia has more references to it than the entire rest of the World. You do not become notable because you are in encyclopedia. You get in an encyclopedia because you are notable. This is Wikipedia SPAM and an encyclopedia should not be used in this manner. The article was discussed at length at Talk:Digital rights management. ی پیرحیاتی suggests it be discussed at Talk:Think (journal). Why discuss an addition to this article on the empty talk page of a stub? The editor even removed a sentence at DRM saying that this article, suggesting that it is moral to break the laws of nearly every country, is controversial. Objective3000 (talk) 15:54, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Is it an academic article or not? --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 15:56, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * There are millions of academic articles written by students in little-known journals. The point is, it has not been discussed anywhere. There are no critical reviews. It is unknown. It has no weight. Before something is added to an encyclopedia, there must be some discussion elsewhere. See the following, where a math journal accepted a paper generated by a program stringing together random math terms in the typical fashion of an academic paper: []. Objective3000 (talk) 16:07, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * "...there must be some discussion elsewhere"; Is it mentioned in Wikipedia's policies? Where? --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 16:31, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Fact is, during the discussion on this paragraph on the DRM article, I was asked to give refs that it was, indeed, controversial. I tried, but was unable to find any reference to the article at all. No one has heard of it. No one has discussed it. At least there is no record of any discussion. It's just an unknown guy stating his opinion that it is ethical to steal eBooks, and was filed away without comment. If no one has heard of it, how can it have the weight needed to rate as encyclopedic? You do not add something to an encyclopedia to give it notability. It must already have notability. If no one noticed it, it isn’t notable. There have been massive discussions on the subject. Why add anything, much less an entire section, on a student paper that engendered no discussion? Objective3000 (talk) 17:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I asked you to refer me to a Wikipedian law or policy that justifies your argument. As far as I know, notability deals with entries, not sources. The source must be reliable and published. Identifying reliable sources explicitly says: "When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources". By the way, the article does not say that "it is ethical to steal ebooks". You may want to check it again, although the content of a source doesn't have anything to do with its reliability. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 09:44, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * This is absurd. The person is a complete unknown in ANY field. He is not a reliable source in ANY field. But, you continue to push it into multiple articles and refuse to even admit it is controversial or respond to anything I have said. And, it will be allowed to remain because WP is no longer unbiased. Objective3000 (talk) 12:06, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your language! Please answer this question: Is it against Wikipedia policies to use this source or not? --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 12:16, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * It doesn’t even meet the overview of WP:RS. RS states there are three related meanings to source: the work, the author, the publisher, and that “Any of the three can affect reliability”. “Authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject.” “These qualifications should be demonstrable to other people.” Again, this is a completely unknown student. He has no known history in any field, much less “regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject”. He just posited a personal opinion in a philosophical journal. I cannot see how anyone can consider this a reliable source. It is simply some guy’s personal philosophy.


 * From WP:SCHOLARSHIP: “Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves.” Yet, this is EXACTLY what you did. Your addition uses the unencyclopedic words “it seems” followed by a conclusion that stealing ebooks is not morally wrong, followed by an unsupported and odd claim that EVERY argument that stealing eBooks is wrong is an argument against libraries. And you base this on an unknown person with no apparent background in any field from a philosophy journal. You may as well add an assertion that stealing eBooks is moral because Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said “property is theft”. Then, you could add this to every article involving the taking of personal property. Proudhon is certainly better known than this student. Objective3000 (talk) 12:56, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I changed my addition to a kind of non-interpretative report. So your second argument is dealt with. As far as the first argument is concerned, the work is a peer-reviewed article in a journal sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy in London and published by Cambridge University Press. The author is formally and officially studying ethics at the Vanderbilt University, so he has some kind of authority and also this authority has been examined by the reviewing process of the aforementioned journal which authority is demonstrable (and in this case obvious) to other people. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 14:25, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It's clearly a reliable source, for the reasons Ali Pirhayati says . It's an article published in an academic journal, which is produced under the auspices of a major academic philosophical organisation and published by one of the most prestigious academic presses. The author is a PhD candidate, that is to say, an advanced graduate student, at a top-tier research university. The relevant question is whether this particular argument is sufficiently significant to justify inclusion on this page. I don't know how widely-cited this paper is, and my guess would be that there are more in-depth, and more widely cited, papers on the ethics of copyright, and if we can find them we should cite them in preference to this paper. In particular, an academic paper which included a literature review surveying many different arguments about the ethics of copyright would be a particularly good source for us to use. VoluntarySlave (talk) 14:39, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
 * This is my point. It is not cited anywhere except the Wikipedia refs added by Ali Pirhayati. It appears to have garnered zero interest. Wikipedia should never be the first cite. It is also not a journal on law, economics, business, or any field directly related to the article. And, as a philosophy journal, what kind of "peer review" is there? Unlike a physical sciences journal, there are no proofs to check. It is merely an opinion meant to engender thought. That is the purpose of this particular journal. The author is unknown in the field and not a reliable source on the subject of copyright. I believe there is a standard method of measuring a journal author's reputation and there are those in WP that have the tools. Objective3000 (talk) 16:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I think there is another point that should be considered. This is an encyclopedia read worldwide and often used by children. Basically, this section is telling these children that it is moral to violate laws which exist in nearly all countries. A minor may not understand that this is just a philosophical view expressed by an unknown person in an obscure journal. Great care must be taken to make certain that WP is not advocating, or giving undue weight to someone advocating, lawlessness. Or, as WP:RS states: “When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised” Objective3000 (talk) 16:43, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Why don't you answer my arguments? "Wikipedia should never be the first cite"!? Where does that come from? This is a journal on philosophy and ethics and my addition also deals with ethics of copyright. What is wrong with that? We do not measure academic journals. They are already measured. Think (journal) is so notable and reliable that it has an article in Wikipedia. If you think it's not notable, try to put it in the deletion process. This is the wrong place for this discussion. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 16:51, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * You are really stretching here. First, Think Journal is not a journal of philosophy and ethics. It is a general journal on philosophy designed to be readable by the general public. Second, you comment that “Think (journal) is so notable and reliable that it has an article in Wikipedia.” Yes, there is a two paragraph stub article, of which you are one of the few editors, that was pretty much taken from the journal’s own blurb about itself. On your comment that “We do not measure academic journals,” I was doing no such thing. I was measuring the credentials of the author. Not all articles in journals are created equal. I cannot find ANY citations outside of the ones that you added to WP, and I have tried several times. If an author's work is never cited by anyone else in the field, it's hardly a reliable source. Objective3000 (talk) 17:13, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Think Journal is a journal of philosophy and ethics, designed to be readable by the general public, so it is exactly suitable for Wikipedia. As far as its notability is concerned, you can provide your arguments for its deletion in its talk page. As long as it has an entry on Wikipedia, we assume it has notability. Here you can refer to the laws and policies that prohibit the use of this source. For example, where is this written: "Wikipedia should never be the first cite"? --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 21:16, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Did you read any of my edit? You AGAIN claim that Think is a journal of philosophy and ethics. NO, it is a philosophy journal. Their site does not claim to be a journal on ethics. You AGAIN claim that I am arguing that Think is non-notable and that it should be AfD’d, even though I stated I am not making that claim. And for the third time say that I should discuss on the Think Talk page. NOWHERE have I said anything of the sort and I have nothing to say on the empty Think Talk page. The Think Journal article is an orphan, stub that has only had three edits in the last two years -- two by you. I have zero interest in the article. What I am saying that the AUTHOR is completely unknown, completely uncited, and an article with NO cites hardly makes a good source. As WP:SCHOLARSHIP says, “extreme caution is advised” when citing a primary source. You should cite sources that discuss the primary source. But, there are none, because the author is not known, and not a resource on this or any other subject. He is a student whose papers have never engendered any discussion that can be found. Objective3000 (talk) 23:18, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

And I AGAIN ask you to show me the laws regarding your claims. Where is this written in the laws and policies: "You should cite sources that discuss the primary source."? According to WP:SCHOLARSHIP, extreme caution was advised, because I used almost exact sentences of the article. For your argument regarding WP:RS, I said that the work, the publisher and the author are reliable. What else? Also ethics is a branch of philosophy. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 03:08, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Read the entire sections that I referenced. Primary sources should be avoided. The author must be a reliable source, in addition to the journal. The author is a complete unknown with no citations. The article has no citations. How can you possibly claim that the author is an expert in this area when no one has ever cited his work? Objective3000 (talk) 12:49, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I have answered all your arguments. You are making your own laws. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:11, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * How can you possibly believe that a completely unknown, un-cited person writing a completely unknown, un-cited, highly controversial article is a reliable source on any subject, much less a particular subject, in an encyclopedia? Can't you find a source that someone has heard of for the argument you wish to add that it is moral to steal? If you can't find any other source, then clearly this is not worthy of a section in WP. Objective3000 (talk) 14:28, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I believe an academic peer-reviewed article, published by Royal Institute of Philosophy and Cambridge University Press which author is admitted to the Vanderbilt University is worthy of a section in WP, no matter what it says. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but that's hilarious. Do you have any idea what incredible nonsense has been printed in journals? As of two years ago, there were an estimated 53,097 peer-reviewed journals. . So, anything published in these journals can be used as a reference, even if no one has ever commented on the article? This is an encyclopedia. That is not enough. Please again read WP:SCHOLARSHIP. You are not using "extreme caution" by using an un-cited article by an un-cited author not known as an expert in any field. You seem to be very impressed that he, like you, is a student. But, WP requires better sourcing. The very first sentence in WP:SCHOLARSHIP states: "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised...." Forget extreme caution, you have not used any caution at all by relying on a primary instead of secondary source and selecting a source that is completely unknown positing a highly controversial idea that stealing eBooks is moral. Frankly, it is not using "extreme caution" for an encyclopedia, read by children around the world, to help circulate the concept that stealing is good, originating with a completely unknown student with zero commentary by anyone else. Objective3000 (talk) 16:36, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Following is the start of a synopsis from a Think Journal article from last year: "Toot. Pass gas. Break wind. Cut the cheese. Float an air biscuit. Burp from behind. Blow the brown horn. The backfire, bant, bucksnort, booty bomb, colon cologne, drifter, fanny bubble, gasser, gurgler, moon beam, nether belch, pants puffer, pooh tune, rip-snort, sphincter whistle, thunder dumpling, tush tickler, and trouser cough." As you believe this is worthy of a section in WP, where do you suggest this be added? Objective3000 (talk) 16:44, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, I just read the article and it is based on a complete misunderstanding of copyright law making several statements that are outright false. It's not surprising that no one found it worthy of comment. Objective3000 (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Please consider No personal attacks. First, thank you for refering to "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible." I accept this. Assuming it's a primary source, here it was not possible for us to rely on secondary sources and we used a primary source. What is wrong with it? Second, I don't believe it's a primary source at all, because the article has been reviewed by a journal that has published articles by such notable authors as Antony Flew, Nigel Warburton, Simon Blackburn etc. Third, I'm not interested in the subject of the synopsis you mentioned, but I don't see a problem with using it in Wikipedia articles, simply because it does not violate Wikipedia's rules and policies. Fourth, thank you again for reading this article, but as you may know, your personal views do not matter here. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 17:07, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * 1.	I made no personal attack.
 * 2.	The names you mentioned had NOTHING to do with the article. That's like comparing a politician that once wrote an op-ed for the NY Times with the numerous Pulitzer Prize winners that have contributed to the paper.
 * 3.	Of course it’s a primary source. It as written by him and is the first and only publication. A secondary source might be a  review article, monograph, or textbook.
 * 4.	I have explained what is wrong with it eight times. It was written by a complete unknown and there are zero cites to the article or any article ever written by him. He is not a known source on the subject of this article. His opinion carries no weight on the subject of copyright law. Objective3000 (talk) 18:16, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Please see WP:UNDUE. Generally, views of tiny minorities should not be included. From Jimmy Wales: "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article." This view has been stated by one person in a paper with zero cites. Objective3000 (talk) 19:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

1. Does Wikipedia say "Do not use primary sources" or "It's better not to use them"? 2. It's not a primary source because according to the policies, "academic and peer-reviewed publications ... are usually the most reliable sources". So the reference to them is recommended 3. I showed the reliability of the source and author several times. 4. The article is not the "view of a tiny minority". It's a kind of question about the ethical aspects of copyright. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 02:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Does anyone else have anything to say before I escalate this? I hate to waste the time of others. Seriously, a person with zero known citations and no known expertise on the subject of the article, or any other subject, with a highly controversial opinion used as a source in an encyclopedia.Objective3000 (talk) 03:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

If you are interested in other views, note that VoluntarySlave and Belorn say it's a reliable source. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 04:13, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Forcehimes paper: weight rather than reliability
Maybe it would be helpful to shift the discussion from reliability to weight? It doesn't look like either of you are going to change the other's mind about reliability, but perhaps we could get somewhere by looking whether having a section on ethical arguments against copyright results in us giving undue weight to Forcehimes's paper. My initial thought is that ethical arguments about the validity of copyright would be a significant enough area of discussion to reflect in this article. However, if the only source on ethical arguments against copyright is this one short article by Forcehimes, maybe there isn't actually very much debate in this area, and so having a section on it would be to give it undue weight. But, on the other hand, there are other sections in this entry that also appear to only be based on one source, so having a section based only on this Forcehimes paper wouldn't be unfairly giving this source more weight than other sources in the article. Ali Pirhayati, could you say a bit about why you chose this source as the basis for the section in the article, and if you know whether or not there are other sources that discuss ethical arguments about copyright? I had a very brief look in the my university library's catalog, and I was surprised not to find any articles directly on the ethics of copyright, but as I say, it was a very brief look and I may easily have missed some. VoluntarySlave (talk) 10:17, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the comments. This would seem to suggest the possibility that some other sections should also be removed. I might also point out that the article doesn't actually say that copyright is unethical. Objective3000 (talk) 12:24, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I contacted Stephen Law, the editor of Think Journal, this morning and asked if the peer-review of the Forcehimes article included a review of the legal underpinnings of the argument therein. He responded no and that he would make corrections if needed. I explained that the conclusion of the article appears to be based on a misunderstanding of copyright law. Stephen Law contacted Sadulla Karjiker, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Stellenbosch University who specializes in Intellectual Property Law, for a review. Sadulla Karjiker has reviewed the article and written a response, which the editor tells me will be published in the next issue of Think. I have read the article. It is quite lengthy and detailed, and concludes that there appears to be no inherent contradiction in prohibiting the online distribution of ebooks without the copyright holders’ consent, and permitting access to physical books via public libraries. This is the opposite of the Forcehimes conclusion.


 * So, the Forcehimes paper was NOT peer-reviewed for legal content, and a later academic peer-review, requested by the journal, by an expert in copyright (the subject of this WP article) comes to the opposite conclusion. So, we have an opinion from one person in a philosophy journal that has never been cited. We will have an opinion from an actual academic expert in copyright law, the subject of this WP article, that explains the errors. I think this goes to both WP:RS and WP:UNDUE. In any case, how can a minority of one, even if he understood copyright law and was cited, be included in Wikipedia, against the express statement from the founder of Wikipedia that such should not be included? Objective3000 (talk) 14:32, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I also thank VoluntarySlave. I added some other sources that somehow argue against copyright ethically. I only added the views against copyright to justify the reference to Forcehimes and solve the problem of weight, but other users can add arguments against the aforementioned arguments (arguments for the copyright). Also we should note that the Forcehimes' paper (at least the part I quoted) is a kind of question about the consistency of moral views about copyright and it does not prove anything, hence I think it doesn't make a weight problem. And in response to Objective3000, I should say that a paper on ethics does NOT need to be peer-reviewed for legal content. The legal arguments must be ethical, not vice versa. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 16:25, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Would you stop adding to a section that is under discussion for possible deletion until the discussion has completed? And the editor of Think appears to disagree with you. If a paper draws a conclusion based entirely on a legal argument, obviously that legal argument should be reviewed. Particularly when the argument is based on a misunderstanding of law. Objective3000 (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

First, we are not talking about a section; we are talking about one particular reference and the ethical section is not anymore limited to that one reference. Second, the Forcehimes' paper is about the morality of copyright, not its legality. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 17:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * We most certainly are talking about the section of ethics. Forcehime's paper was based entirely on a legal argument based on a misunderstanding of the law. It is about the ethics of violating that law. If he misstates the law, the argument is meaningless. If you started a philosophy paper with the statement that 1+1=3, and used that to come to a conclusion, are you saying that we should completely ignore the fact that the assumption is wrong and allow the argument to stand, because it is in a philosophy journal? The statement IF A THEN B is always true if A is false. But, that says nothing whatever about B. Think Journal is publishing a response by an actual expert in copyright law (the subject of this Wikipedia article) that negates the conclusion of the Forcehime paper. A paper written by someone that has never been cited on philosophy, law, or anything else. I still cannot imagine why anyone thinks Wikipedia should be the first to cite this person. It's just some guy's opinion based on a misunderstanding of the subject.Objective3000 (talk) 18:08, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * The additions that you just made are completely one-sided. I just read the original documents -- and they are not in the least one-sided. You simply cherry-picked statements that you liked instead of giving any of the original flavor of the discussion. I try to see good faith -- but you are obviously pushing a POV into this article. Objective3000 (talk) 18:16, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

1. No, we are not talking about the section of ethics according to the title of the last two sections of this talk page. 2. Forcehimes' main point is arguing that downloading books and using a library are alike and the ethical jundgements about the two must be alike, too. This main point does not have anything to do with the law. 3. I myself said that I added one-sided arguments (also this is "Anti-copyright" article). You may add opponent arguments. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 18:26, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * It is titled "Ethical arguments", by you. Forcehime's point was entirely based on the law, or rather a misunderstanding of the law. Using the actual law, the opposite conclusion is reached. As will be shown in the response by an actual expert in the area of this WP article. I have no intention of adding any arguments to this article. You used as a ref a paper, and yet gave a completely one-sided view of its contents. Editors are not supposed to split up into opposing camps and add their interpretations of papers favoring their "side". This is the opposite of what Wikipedia editors should do. If you ref a paper that has two sides, and cherry pick the quotes to favor one side, you are not making an honest ref. Objective3000 (talk) 18:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

1. The titles of the two sections of this talk page show that we are talking only about Forcehimes' paper. 2. Even if you show that Forcehimes' paper has some legal problems, it won't implicate anything, because it's a reliable source and your point must be in some published source. 3. In the first reference, As you recommended, I used a secondary source (Alfino's paper) for refering to two papers against copyright (Bringsjord's and Hettinger's). These two papers are obviously against the copyright. In the second reference (Warwick's paper), I quoted exact sentences from the conclusion, so they're authentic. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 19:04, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * My point is published in the Wikipedia article on Fair Use. There are now so many things wrong with the Forcehimes paper, it is beyond belief that anyone would support it in an encyclopedia. Even the editor of the journal, of which you feel so highly, is publishing a review by an actual expert in the subject of this article that destroys it. You cherry-picked the new article providing a sense about the paper that is simply false to push a particular POV. This is hopeless. You are stretching the rules completely out of shape. Objective3000 (talk) 19:50, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

It is correct to categorize my paper as a moral argument. Let me start by making a distinction between (i) the law and (ii) the moral principles that undergird the law. The focus of my argument was (ii). On the one hand, if we think egalitarian considerations justify libraries, then we should think that these same egalitarian considerations justify stealing books online. If, on the other hand, we think that economic incentives justify a prohibition on stealing books online, then we should think those same economic considerations justify a prohibition on libraries. The arguments modesty comes from this parity thesis. I am assuming you (the reader) think libraries are justified and accordingly, if the parity holds, are committed to thinking that stealing books online is justified. Though the upshot concerns (i) legality, the argument, to repeat, all takes place a the level of (ii) the principles undergirding the law. So, even if an argument comes out showing that current legal practices are consistent, this fails to address the argument at the level it operates. --Forcehimes (talk) 21:22, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Clarification. I made my last post before having access to Karjiker’s (forthcoming) article. I’ve now read this article. Karjiker’s argument attacks the economic incentives parity. Though I disagree with this arguments conclusions, it attacks my argument at the correct level – (ii) from my previous post. -- Forcehimes (talk) 21:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Welcome to Wikipedia. Please read WP:FORUM. Objective3000 (talk) 21:40, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Then don't make this a forum by writing about your personal views. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 21:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * My personal view is that this is an encyclopedia. And, the articles in an encyclopedia should be balanced and based on expertise in the area of each article. This article is about copyright law. Objective3000 (talk) 21:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

And I showed there is no violation of Wikipedia's laws and policies. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 22:02, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * This article was badly unbalanced before you came. You have now added three additional links to further the imbalance. If you were not trying to push a WP:POV, then balancing the article would be the responsible action instead of trying to prove that copyright holders are using an unethical instrument. Objective3000 (talk) 22:10, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

This is about "anti-copyright". Like economic and cultural arguments against copyright, I added ethical arguments against it. Others can add ethical arguments for copyright to copyright or to the section "criticism of anti-copyright". --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 22:15, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I remove bad edits from both those pro and con on various associated articles. Editors are not supposed to support a POV. You appear to be proselytizing a POV and, for some reason, expect that I, or some group, have some responsibility to edit in the opposing POV. I am only interested in balance and rationality within WP "rules". I am not trying to push a POV, have no interest in adding an opposing POV, and wish you would stop asking me to support some POV that you think I have. Again, editors are not supposed to break into separate camps in some battle to drive articles in their direction. Editors are supposed to improve articles, which includes improving balance -- not pushing articles into further imbalance toward their views.


 * Wikipedia has a large number of rules, as well it should, to ensure accuracy. Interestingly, the rules view verifiability above accuracy. But, the rules do this in order to ultimately increase accuracy. It seems a contradiction. But, it is no more a contradiction than the first rule of Wikipedia -- Ignore all rules. WP:WIARM. “If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.” The ultimate goal is to improve an encyclopedia. But, to follow this non-rule, you must first wipe your mind of any other goals. Specifically, promulgating a POV.  Forcehimes is promulgating an idea. That’s fine. But, he is writing a journal article in a journal designed to provoke thought – not cure cancer or to necessarily be entirely accurate. I respect his effort to provoke thought. But, it does not belong in an encyclopedia. It’s just his opinion, and un-cited.


 * If you wish to improve this encyclopedia, perhaps you should try articles where you do not have a such a strong POV. Just a friendly suggestion. Objective3000 (talk) 01:31, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, that is a suggestion for yourself. You are definitely supporting a POV by calling other views "absurd", "hilarious", "silly" and "Absolute Bull" and also by deleting opposite views. You oppose the main point of Forcehimes' paper and you're trying to shut it up. When you don't allow other reliable views to be expressed, you are obviously pushing your POV. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 05:51, 3 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Making up and exaggerating stuff is not useful.Objective3000 (talk) 11:40, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad that you have reached this conclusion! --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 12:54, 3 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Your comments are becoming nothing but snarky insults and violations of WP:CIV. You are pushing an obvious POV with additions claiming that copyright is immoral and unethical in an already unbalanced article. You claim I am pushing a POV. What POV? I haven't added anything to the article on any "side". You have no idea what my POV related to the article is. I am just trying to remove poorly sourced, incorrect, and cherry-picked material to help with the balance. Objective3000 (talk) 14:22, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Apparently this a reciprocal feeling! I have replied to all these comments. --Ali Pirhayati (talk) 15:26, 3 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Let me drop NPOV for a moment. The addition I just made to this article was a copy from Intellectual property. I made it not just to bring out balance, but because I think this article should be subsumed into the IP article. The arguments, pro and con, are the same. The same, no matter how many people try to draw distinctions between different flavors of intellectual property rights by misunderstandings of the laws agreed upon by nearly all countries in the Berne Convention. Many of these disagreements amount to straw arguments, claiming injustice by misquoting the actual laws and agreements. Of course, as in all disagreements, there exist multiple sides. I know some people believe otherwise. And, they can point any differences in that, far more inclusive article. For those that are anti-copyright, seems to me that one strong article is better. For those that are pro, same. For those that want a good encyclopedia, same. Let us give the best possible, encyclopedic, explanation of the history, content, reasons, criticisms, etc. in one good article. My humble opinion.Objective3000 (talk) 01:53, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem
This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Dana boomer (talk) 11:27, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Recent activity
This article has been renamed, without discussion, and is now seeing mass deletions of accepted text by someone with a clear POV who appears to have no interest in discussion. This would appear to be a problem.Objective3000 (talk) 00:02, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Ethical Issues is a stub
Maybe the contents could be put in other sections of the article, or removed altogether? 81.233.196.43 (talk) 10:19, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Edit war
User:90.203.193.86, You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war&#32; according to the reverts you have made on Opposition to copyright. Wikipedia users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement. Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states: If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.
 * 1) Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
 * 2) Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

In addition, your other edits suggest a close association with the music industry. If this is the case, our policy on conflict of interest editing applies as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:15, 11 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It is certainly an example of edit-warring. OTOH, the text should be removed as it gives a couple of questionable, ancient examples in a narrow area to come to a broad brush conclusion. Objective3000 (talk) 23:11, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Edit-Warring by ‎Pirhayati
Pirhayati is adding his own work to this article while refusing to discuss it. I have no idea what it says as it appears to be in Persian. Objective3000 (talk) 12:36, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Please sign your message. Is there a policy against Persian sources? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * There is a policy against using unreliable sources. I can find nothing that tells me what npps.ir is WP:RS. There is a policy against edit-warring WP:EW. There is a policy against original research. You are adding your own work. WP:OR. There is a policy against pushing a point of view. You are adding your personal opinions to an article. WP:POV. You are ignoring the WP:BRD essay by restoring challenged text without discussion. There is no consensus for this text. You are in violation of policy and should self-revert your attempt to add your personal opinions to an encyclopedia article. Objective3000 (talk) 12:44, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * 1. There are plenty of non-English sources in Wikipedia. You can use google translate. 2. Then please don't edit-war. 3. It is "published", so it is not original research" 4. As I said before, you are definitely supporting a POV by calling other views "absurd", "hilarious", "silly" and "Absolute Bull" and also by deleting opposite views. You oppose the main point of this article and you're trying to shut it up. When you don't allow other reliable views to be expressed, you are obviously pushing your POV. Then respect other views. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 12:53, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Google translate cannot translate it adequately. It is not an RS. You are the editor engaging in edit-warring as you refused to follow WP:BRD and restored challenged text without discussion. You just violated WP:AGF by assuming my position on the article. You are referring to comments I made THREE years ago. I am not deleting opposing views. I am deleting original research pushing your point of view.


 * You have not addressed a single one of my statements on policy. You are in violation of policy and should self-revert your attempt to add your personal opinions to an encyclopedia article. Objective3000 (talk) 13:00, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Let's go ahead one-by-one. Can we use non-English sources or not? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:04, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, one step at a time. Remove your edit while it is under discussion as per WP:BRD. Objective3000 (talk) 13:12, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

No. You are the suspect here. The Burden of proof is on you! Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:16, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I am not adding anything. I merely reverted to consensus. The burden is clearly on the person making the edit. Objective3000 (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The burden is clearly on the person who is pushing his POV and offending others. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You are again violating WP:AGF. My POV is that we should follow the guidelines. You are the editor that is adding his OWN article of pure POV. And I have said nothing offensive. Would you please stop making false accusations and follow the guidelines? Remove your edit while it is under discussion as per WP:BRD. Objective3000 (talk) 13:28, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Did you call my edits "absurd" and "hilarious" or not? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Three years ago. It appears that you have no intention of engaging in an honest discussion of the matter at hand. Objective3000 (talk) 13:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, three years ago. Please respect WP:AGF apologize for your behavior. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:33, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You have failed to respond to the policy guidelines discussed. You cannot add your own article containing your own opinions to WP. Please remove as per WP:BRD. Objective3000 (talk) 13:38, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You have failed to respect other users. Please apologize. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:41, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * (ec)There is no prohibition on non-English sources; that is not the issue. It is correct that as the one who seeks a change it is up to you to justify it on this page and explain why it is needed. Objective3000 is correct that the status quo of the article must remain while your proposed change is discussed. Please leave the page alone and explain the reasons for your change, while addressing the policy based issues raised. 331dot (talk) 13:39, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * He is saying that because the source is Persian, it's unreliable. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:53, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That is not what he has said; he has said it is original research for you to post your own work as a source. Sources in articles must be independent reliable sources. 331dot (talk) 13:54, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

How can it be original research when it is published in several sources and I cited the reference? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:57, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You cannot be the one to post your own work. That is a conflict of interest. If you truly feel it should be included, you need to explain why on this page and allow others to add it. 331dot (talk) 14:01, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Conflict of interest does not say such a thing. It says: Do not add texts "about" yourself not "by" yourself. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 14:09, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If you don't see the conflict of interest in you posting your own work to this page, I likely can do little to convince you otherwise. Primary sources are discouraged as references here.  Regardless, you still need to gain consensus for changes you want to see. 331dot (talk) 14:13, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Adding an argument
I want to add the following text to the part "Ethical issues". It is published by the website "Network for Public Policy Studies" (it belongs to Center for Strategic Studies. Let's discuss it:

"Ali Pirhayati proposes a thought experiment for Forcehimes' argument: Imagine a very high-tech physical library in a (say) 10-million-people city. All these people are the members of the library. The library uses UAVs to send books to its members. Hence access to a physical book is possible in a few minutes after the user sends a request for it and after he/she finished reading, the book is immediately sent back to the library (by UAVs). Therefore, the library can provide services to all the population of the city with only 10 copies of a book, because the people who request a certain book at a certain time are not more than 10 people. Then, in this city, nobody needs to buy any books and a book which was to be published in (say) 10000 copies, is published only in 10 copies. Such a library is exactly parallel to downloading ebooks in all morally relevant respects. Whatever you think about stealing books online, you should also think about this high-tech physical library. And, since most people will think such a library is not ethically problematic, they should also think stealing books online is not problematic. "


 * Why should your views on this subject be posted here? Has your work been peer-reviewed or discussed in independent sources? 331dot (talk) 18:00, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

1. Because they are relevant. 2. Yes, NPPS is peer-reviewed. 3. no they are not discussed in independent sources (like other views in Ethical section) Ali Pirhayati (talk) 18:11, 13 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Network for Public Policy Studies is a collection of blogs according to its own site . ‎Pirhayati submitted an article to his own blog hosted by npps.ir, and is now citing his own blog to add his opinions to a Wikipedia article. This addition fails Reliable Sources, Original Research, and Neutral Point of View. Objective3000 (talk) 18:13, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I can't say that I disagree with Objective3000. 331dot (talk) 18:15, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * This is not correct at all. This is the translation of that page: "NPPS invites all the experts in policy-making to become a member and send their policy papers according to the introduced model. All users can submit the membership form. Please send your papers through info@npps.ir. After assessing the paper, it will be published and your name is published in the site."
 * There is no word meaning "blog". You can ask anyone who knows Persian. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 18:22, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Whatever you want to call it, I don't feel that changes anything. 331dot (talk) 18:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Calling what? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 18:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Google translate came up with the word blog. Obviously translators are not perfect. But, I looked through the site. Appears to be about 150-200 members each with a grouping of posts. In other words, a collection of blogs. I did a Google search for "Network for Public Policy Studies". It only came up with three items. The first was this article. Objective3000 (talk) 18:50, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

You're not right, but let's close this discussion. I think Forcehimes' paper is enough. :) Ali Pirhayati (talk) 19:07, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * When I have time, I'll need to reopen discussion on Forcehimes. His paper was entirely based on a misunderstanding of copyright law and how it applies to libraries, as is yours by inheritance (not your fault). When it was added, the claim was that it was peer-reviewed. But, I called the editor of the journal, and he said it was peer-reviewed by professors of ethics and not by anyone as to the legal statements. The journal then asked for a review by an expert in IP law. He wrote a response saying that the legal understanding underpinning the article was false, which the editor of the journal forwarded to me. The editor of the journal said that the response would be published in the next edition. I never checked to see if it was. Wikipedia is quite serious about copyright infringement. We should be particularly diligent in vetting sources that advise readers, some of whom may be impressionable, that stealing is ethical.


 * Incidentally, I realize that Persian is right-to-left and this might be difficult. But, you might try to indent properly. It would ease discussion. Objective3000 (talk) 19:20, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I apologize. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 22:12, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No problem. Objective3000 (talk) 22:17, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

A reference currently leads to a nonexistent source
It's under no. 21: [|Eckhard Höffner. "Copyright and structure of authors' earnings" (PDF). Retrieved February 11, 2012.]

The PDF cannot be found on the linked address and has been completely removed from that domain. I found the PDF on SlideShare, but that cannot be regarded as an official source. Furthermore, it is not a study as seems to be implied, although contains a useful comparison.

There is also an official article from Der Spiegel that mentions the same slide, available in English and German.

This is just a note. I have left the matter as it is for more experienced editors to handle.
 * Thanks for the note. Frankly, the slideshow is rather absurd. Basing an argument on worldwide IP rights based upon a look at only two countries, a couple of centuries ago, ignoring a vast number of other possible influences. Objective3000 (talk) 13:28, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Lede is too long
If the lede was too long, we can discuss what to cut. However, as for the reversion in general, I'd like an explanation for exactly what you think was inappropriate about the content of this version of the lede. It was an explanation of the viewpoint, and briefly looked at one example. That is appropriate for an overview of an ideology with many conflicting ideas. lethargilistic (talk) 11:44, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Your change tried to argue the case for opposition to copyright, as opposed to describing what it is. Indeed, the change even exaggerated the case by, for example, suggesting that copyright can guarantee income. In no manner does it do so. We must leave any possible discussions of arguments for the body, and keep the text neutral. Even in the Democracy article, the lead describes democracies, but doesn’t argue whether the concept is good or bad. As it is, this article is not neutrally written since it presents one side, often absurdly and often with highly slanted puffery like making society ever more free, more equal, more sustainable, and with greater solidarity . It could easily be argued that the opposite is true. O3000 (talk) 12:08, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

State aggression
@User:Lethargilistic Thing is, Kinsella's opinion doesn't make sense. Yes, some countries have in the last thirty years enacted criminal copyright legislation. But it remains the case that nearly all copyright actions worldwide are civil actions - not actions of the state.

In my view, gibberish that is cited is still gibberish. I think it is counterproductive to include material that doesn't make sense - it won't help WP users to understand anything.

Incidentally, there's a huge amount of uncited WP:OR here. My general attitude to articles that are blighted by OR is to delete uncited stuff. BRD, someone reverts, fair dos. That enables me to ask:

Do you think that opinions that don't make sense should be included, simply because the holder is notable and citable? MrDemeanour (talk) 17:40, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't really have an opinion on Kinsella's specific view because I haven't read the book, although I would not oppose removing the "aggression" clause because I don't think I've ever seen that argument made elsewhere, so I'd say its notability is debatable. More broadly, I also don't think it's necessarily our place to just say that an opinion is nonsense and not include it. After all, even though I personally find arguments in favor of copyright policies based upon morality extremely unrealistic about the relationship between copyright claimants, work they claim, and people interested in using the work later, those morality arguments are still used in favor of copyright. And, however wrong I think that is, they've obviously been successful to the extent that they enshrined moral rights policy in the Berne Convention. It's therefore certainly notable and, indeed, deserves its own article. Also, because this article is not very well developed in general, I'd caution against removing things under the banner of WP:OR. Even WP:V says any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material. Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. It does not say that things that are unsourced must be removed. It says they may be removed and that things which are challenged must be sourced. And, just to cover the base, simply saying "I challenge every unsourced statement in the article" would not be respectful of other Wikipedians' time. If you plan to work on this entire article's citation quality, it would be more productive to follow WP:V's suggestion of marking questionable statements with improvement tags like citation needed or better citation needed, or perhaps at least attempt in good faith to find a corroborating source yourself. My personal philosophy is generally that progress toward the content's eventual perfection should be prioritized over minor problems in the current version. Most of this content has a clear path to improvement, so I'm fairly hesitant to remove things just because someone should technically go through and find better references. It's not pretending to be a Featured Article or anything. lethargilistic (talk) 18:21, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I generally agree on the points made by MrDemeanour. Yes, the TPB founders went to prison and Kim Dotcom may also in some distant future. But, nearly all cases are civil. I would imagine the major reason for YouTube takedowns is copyright related and doesn’t require any legal action other than a DMCA which doesn’t require a lawyer. And yes, we need to add multiple viewpoints from RS. But, utter nonsense from activist sources should be limited, and/or relegated to their articles. This is an encyclopedia article, not a manifesto. O3000 (talk) 18:25, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think any of the content in this article rises to the level of "manifesto." And since most prominent sources for opposition to copyright are based on activist activity (whether Lessig or a political party platform), it's natural that their views be covered. Just because you, personally, think their fears are nonsense, that is not a reason to cut them from the article if they are notable, perhaps if they are widely cited or appear in several different peoples' belief systems. TPB is certainly notable here and is not talked about that much. As for Kim Dotcom and YouTube, those are not in the article at present, so their notability isn't at issue. At a gloss, I'd say Kim Dotcom's views could be used as a specific example of a wider belief, but not alone. That's also why I'm not opposed to removing the "aggression" clause that started this discussion, as I doubt that part of "Artificial Scarcity" is a wide view. I didn't outright remove it because I wasn't sure. lethargilistic (talk) 18:42, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I've never heard of the "state aggression" label. This would require multiple sources and shouldn't be included based on one deontological anarcho-capitalist. Also, the scarcity argument must include the obvious responses for balance. O3000 (talk) 19:08, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. On the second point, feel free to add counterpoints to whatever appears in the article or direct to other articles. The lack of counterpoints in the current version is a temporary problem, not a reason for removing content. Also, keep WP:FALSEBALANCE in mind. Just because there is a counterpoint does not mean that that counterpoint must receive exactly equal time, especially when the article is about one side's view. lethargilistic (talk) 19:14, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes well, the fact that it presents one "side" suggests that it is a WP:POVFORK. And, I'd hardly think the status quo is a false balance. O3000 (talk) 19:19, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * There is plenty of material for an opposition to copyright article, so per WP:POVFORK: The creator of the new article may be sincerely convinced that there is so much information about a certain aspect of a subject that it justifies a separate article.. It's appropriate. I also agree that the status quo should be represented in the article. However, although it is an imperfect example, consider Socialism vs. Capitalism. The socialism article is not half-capitalism and does not respond to every point with a capitalist view because the article is not about capitalism, and the capitalism article is also not about socialism. Part of why it's not perfect is that I can't think of an argument against copyright offhand that hasn't at least been answered by a pro-copyright viewpoint, so there's almost certainly something you could add to each section to represent that viewpoint. That does not mean each section should be half-pro-copyright, as that would be what I consider false balance in describing opposition. Also, remember that there are several branches of opposition to copyright that argue for returning to old versions of the law, some of which were in place much longer than current versions, so they could just as easily be called a return to a "status quo." lethargilistic (talk) 19:30, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Socialism vs. capitalism is not on point and those articles don't push any POV. Opposition to copyright is clearly, specifically about copyright. Also, this article isn’t about a “certain aspect of a subject". It is an argument against the subject of the main article. Surely smells like a POVFORK. O3000 (talk) 19:48, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This article does not currently push a POV, it would not do so by simply describing its subject if expanded properly, and concerns of false balance are a concern for the reader's education and not in service of a particular POV. Hell, most "criticism" of subjects is done in a single section of the larger articles, which is almost certainly how this page started its life. The simple fact is that it is a topic too broad to be relegated to such a section. I don't think there would ever be consensus to do that, too, so I don't think discussing that further would be productive. I'd rather address POV problems that currently exist in the article's text (such as not enough counterpoint) via responsible expansion rather than debate what might happen if we assume in bad faith that the article will be expanded incorrectly. lethargilistic (talk) 05:00, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * @Lethargilistic et al.: Thank you for your remarks.
 * I fully take your point that it is inappropriate to simply wade through an article removing all uncited content, and that instead one should generally (a) try to find suitable citations, and (b) failing that, tag content as being in need of references. I have re-read the article, and perhaps it is not so badly infested with OR and uncited content as I have claimed; maybe it just needs re-organising. However the accusation of state aggression is nonsense, because the state is so rarely involved in copyright enforcement. It should be removed. MrDemeanour (talk) 02:45, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Removed the aggression remark per our unanimous consensus. I've thought about reorganizing this article myself, though it's seemed daunting due to the variety of alternate takes. One approach might be to break it up into major categories of dispute, such as arguments on economic, moral, technological, etc. grounds. lethargilistic (talk) 05:00, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

General reorganization
Alright, if we're actually going to do this, it would be better for us to actually set out a plan rather than delete a bunch of stuff and communicate through edit summaries. I think we should settle on the highest level organization of the article first. What broad categories of objection are there? I'm sure there are papers and organizations out there that would supply content for this high level outline. My understanding of the subject is mostly American, so my topics list will certainly weigh toward sources examining economic forces. It goes without saying that counterarguments would appear throughout; just because I framed these as questions for expediency does not mean the article would be making arguments itself.


 * Organizations that oppose copyright to one degree or another
 * Advocating changes to copyright
 * Use existing copyright law to promote change (copyleft, CC, etc.)
 * Abolition (This should not be first on the list, as it's not really common among advocacy groups)
 * Academic/Scholarly takes on the issue
 * Overall goals of copyright. Are they being met?
 * Prevent monopolization of works
 * Compel the release of documents to the public
 * Promote the creation of new works
 * Lead to authors being paid better
 * Economic (Heald and Boyle would be good sources here)
 * Market concerns
 * Are authors fairly compensated?
 * Does the current system weigh in corporations' favor?
 * How do poor/disadvantaged/those in the developing world get access to copyrighted things?
 * Piracy
 * Does it matter?
 * Does it harm authors?
 * Why have some authors embraced piracy and believe it helps them sell more books? (Neil Gaiman, CD Projekt RED)
 * Term length
 * Does a longer term benefit authors within their lifetimes?
 * Does a posthumous term benefit the author enough to justify its costs to society?
 * Does a retroactive extension of copyright benefit society?
 * What about the people who want to use things made in their lifetimes?
 * Automatic copyright
 * What were the arguments in favor of copyright formalities?
 * Morality (any objections to moral rights)
 * Concerns with the Berne Convention
 * Three step test
 * Does attribution have value?
 * Do people who were born during/after the time when the thing was created have a right of their own to respond to it?
 * Are there demonstrable differences between the European and American systems that weigh in favor or against one or the other?
 * sui generis database rights?
 * Is it moral for an author to prevent people from reading their work simply because they speak a language that the author will not authorize a translation into?
 * Advancing technology (Boyle, Lessig)
 * Does copyright adequately adapt to technology advances? (People will point to the automatic piano in the US or Betamax)
 * Does copyright prevent things that may benefit society? (Google Books, TVEyes, mass text crawling)
 * Natural rights (Maybe Hettinger, perhaps there's a critique of Lysander Spooner's work out there)
 * Copyright is not physical property
 * Conflicts with the public domain (Boyle)
 * What separates a book written in 1922 from a book written in 1923?
 * How available are books written before 1922 compared to books written afterward?
 * What is the value of a commons like the public domain?
 * Are companies mining the public domain and then preventing works from entering it? (Disney)
 * Copyright's expanding scope
 * How has copyright expanded from literature to cover basically anything?
 * How do you define originality? How is that distinguished from creativity?
 * How do we rationalize things that are uncopyrightable because they are not original enough? Is the bar of originality that too low?
 * We could probably have a bunch of section of criticism of different expansions, but here are some quickies:
 * software
 * fashion
 * public speeches/presentations
 * public art/architecture
 * Objections to the framing of the argument in favor of copyright
 * Arguments against lumping copyright into and arguing about the term intellectual property in general?
 * "Why do you hate poor artists?"
 * "Why do you expect to get things for free?"
 * Empirical evidence is rarely presented in favor of copyright during calls for expansion to copyright. Boyle calls is an "Evidence free zone"
 * Celebrity endorsements of copyright over time. (Hugo, Twain, Sonny Bono's wife. Recently, Smokey Robinson)

Certainly weighing in favor of economic arguments as I expected, but I think we could easily fill in something like this. lethargilistic (talk) 04:57, 5 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for working on this, lethargilistic. I am more of a copy-editor by inclination, than an article author, and I don't want to try to contribute to your article structure, other than by body-shaming: I suggest that it needs a diet.


 * Your taxonomy is certainly comprehensive. It could accommodate a very long article. To be honest, I don't think a long article is called for. The subject is 'Opposition to copyright'; that should not subsume topics such as 'How to improve copyright', 'Using copyright to promote change', 'Why some authors benefit from unauthorised copying' and so on. In fact there is precious little to say about Opposition to copyright as such; very few groups oppose copyright outright, and they tend to be fringe.


 * There is quite a number of articles about different aspects of copyright. Some of this material should end up in those articles, not coatracking on Opposition.


 * Incidentally I do not want to encounter the term 'piracy' in any article on copyright. That term is strictly POV, comparing as it does copyright infringement with a particularly nasty kind of violent crime on the high seas. Same goes for 'copyright theft', a term that takes for granted that copyright is a kind of property, and then applies to it the term 'theft', meaning 'to take with the intention of permanently depriving'. Copyright is not a kind of property, and infringement is not a kind of theft. MrDemeanour (talk) 09:13, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Haha, I often go overboard on outlines. Certainly, not all of these would be sections and there would be cuts. I agree that there is little to say about copyright abolitionists, but I think the limiting the article to outright opposition/abolitionism would make the article less useful because, as you say, those are fringe views and most copyright criticism comes from people who want to improve the system. (Not to mention it would make the anemic copyright abolition article redundant.) Perhaps a name change for the article is in order? "Criticism of copyright," even if that's a tad boring? Def agree on limiting the information that would better live in other articles, and there would probably be significant incentive to link out to those from here. Also agree on piracy -> copyright infringement. lethargilistic (talk) 15:44, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Once again, it looks like you are trying to present an argument against copyright protection with this highly detailed outline containing numerous areas for which there is no text in the body. If we are reorganizing the article, do so around the text in the article. We’re developing an encyclopedia article, not writing a 70,000 word dissertation. O3000 (talk) 16:32, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * While we don't have to use the entire outline, it's not necessary to limit ourselves to things already inn the article because the article is poorly organized and not comprehensive even on the issues it does talk about. Aside, repeating this vacuous accusation that I am trying to "present an argument" doesn't make it any more true. I'd prefer that you do me the courtesy of stopping. I have repeatedly been deferential to your insistent POV, even when I have deeply disagreed, and I have repeatedly agreed that the article needs counterpoints. This doesn't contribute to the discussion and could easily be said to be a product of your own biases, inappropriately so. lethargilistic (talk) 17:11, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I would appreciate it if you would stop making false accusations that I have a POV. My POV, as always, is that articles should follow WP guidelines. O3000 (talk) 17:27, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I only said it once, and once was enough. Let us please restrict commentary to the substance of the proposal from here on. lethargilistic (talk) 17:39, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 4 April 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 03:06, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Opposition to copyright → Criticism of copyright – This article broadly covers criticism of copyright in general, not just opposition groups, and the current title sounds like POV to me, particularly with the use of opposition. There are more critics of copyright than are there actual opponents (I for one think copyright is too strict and should only focus on protecting the commercial interests of the copyright holders, but seeing that there are practical uses in protecting such interests, I do not oppose it). Gamingforfun 3 6 5 00:48, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Support. Boring title, but strict opposition to copyright is a fringe view and the article is about more than that. lethargilistic (talk) 03:15, 4 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Support - A far more accurate description of the article. Primergrey (talk) 05:11, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. bd2412  T 02:59, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Support per above. A better description of the page's contents.--Yaksar (let's chat) 01:32, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Added link about sci-hub

 * Sci-Hub - network of pirated research papers, "Sci-Hub can instantly provide access to more than two-thirds of all scholarly articles",  Lindsay McKenzie. Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests. Science Magazine. Jul. 27, 2017. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/sci-hub-s-cache-pirated-papers-so-big-subscription-journals-are-doomed-data-analyst

Onlyforwikiapps (talk) 22:22, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Anti copyright "sentiment"
In the first sentence, this article conflates criticism of copyright with anti copyright "sentiment". Sentiment implies emotional response and is often regarded pejoratively, whereas most of the the arguments for and against copyright are based on logical reasoning, not sentiment. As such this label is misleading and possibly pejorative, it should be removed form the article or preceded with "regarded by some as sentiment" or words to that effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.93.146.3 (talk) 14:34, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Disagree. "Anti-X sentiment" is a common phrase that has no implications as to logical soundness of the position. I'm not categorically opposed to changing it to something else, but a) it needs to be as pithy, and b) it can't be couched. lethargilistic (talk) 18:54, 11 December 2022 (UTC)