Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Why I Pirate - An Open Letter to Content Creators

<< < (12/16) > >>

wraith808:
I just watched an interesting movie too Repo Men (2010)w.  It's decent movie, if a bit gory.  But a couple of the quotes stuck with me, and reminded me of the excuses given to justify the behavior that goes on towards copyright.

Repo Man justifying what he does"Now what do you think keeps a world like this ones' sh*t together. It's not magic. It's not. It's rules. It's people abiding by the terms of the deals they sign themselves. It's rules. You know what is more important that the rules though? It's the enforcement of those rules."


Repo Man in his memoirs"So what is it I'm writing? It's not just some cranky memoir or even an attempt to apologize indirectly for what I've done. This is a cautionary tale. I hope that you might learn from my mistakes because in the end, a job is not just a job. It's who you are. If you want to change who are you have to change what you do."


You can't absolve the people that make the decisions because the company and the rules tell them that this is required.  If you see such decisions being made, you have to have the moral fortitude to stand up to them.  But, when placed in a position where morality conflicts with career, most ignore the morality of the situation.

tranglos:
and the premise is the idea that yes, corporations are required to increase value for shareholders before anything else.
-tranglos (March 11, 2012, 08:53 AM)
--- End quote ---

Possibly. (I still don't see where it says that in the law itself BTW.) Most of the argument is by extrapolation and assertion that "this is so" rather than actual wording in the law. -40hz (March 11, 2012, 11:15 AM)
--- End quote ---

This is why I said at the end that whatever the law is (in different countries), the de facto standard is what it is. And there are good examples of similar legal constructs being treated as set in stone, even though they have never been the law - such as the concept of corporate personhood.

The reason this distinction is important is because it still doesn't give a business or corporation carte blanche to break the law in the name of maximizing profit. The judicial system has been very clear about that in numerous cases.-40hz (March 11, 2012, 11:15 AM)
--- End quote ---

You are correct, it doesn't give them carte blanche. They are supposed to maximize profit within the confines of applicable law, I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise. But, (a) they have a lot of money to influence what the law is, (b) too often the politicians making the law and the corporate leaders are the same people, and (c) they have good lawyers.

No-one has ever been held responsible for what Union Carbide did in Bhopal, for example. Their US workers got compensation, but not the survivors in India. Likewise, no-one has been held responsible for the financial disaster engineered by the largest investment banks. Either the law is dysfunctional in these scenarios or it doesn't exist or it is not enforced.

Just to be clear on US law, I bounced it off an attorney. She said it was a common misunderstanding of what the law requires of corporations and fiduciaries. "Just because most people might think the same way about something doesn't make it the law," she said. "As many people learn the hard way when they land in court."
 :)
-40hz (March 11, 2012, 11:15 AM)
--- End quote ---

Yep, so for show, a CEO or some minions occasionally land in court , while the corporation continues to exist and do as it pleases. Courts can revoke the corporate charter, which is effectively a "corporate death penalty", but it is never invoked. Instead, we're always told it's the fault of some "bad apples" at the top or just below it. It isn't. Replace the convicted jailbirds with new hires and they will continue to act in exactly the same way, only be better at hiding it.

Two and a half years ago, a girl here in Poland was walking by a bank and got severely injured when a slab of concrete fell off and hit her directly on the head. Sounds like a parable about a big bad bank, doesn't it, but it's what really happened. The left part of her body was paralyzed, she spent many months in rehabilitation but will never return to full health. Not one person has been held responsible. The bank refuses to pay compensation. Instead - and this is why the story is on the news right now -  the bank's insurer has hired a private investigator to spy in the girl at the college where she is studying.

This is not the behavior of a sane, rational, emotionally stable person. This is the behavior of a serious sociopath. Of course the bank is now paying some dues in the horrible PR they're getting on the net, but this will pass and, who knows, maybe they accounted for that in their profit and loss sheets just like GM did 40 years ago.

40hz:
No-one has ever been held responsible for what Union Carbide did in Bhopal, for example. Their US workers got compensation, but not the survivors in India.
-tranglos (March 11, 2012, 04:42 PM)
--- End quote ---

There's a bit more truthiness than truth in that statement.

Bophal was discussed in an earlier thread. See this post about halfway down.

Come to think of it, much of the thread touches upon these exact same issues (justice vs the law, limits of corporate responsibility, etc.) so it might be worth rereading the entire thing. I think it was one of the more interesting discussions ever conducted on this forum. Top of the thread can be found here.
 :Thmbsup:

Yep, so for show, a CEO or some minions occasionally land in court , while the corporation continues to exist and do as it pleases. Courts can revoke the corporate charter, which is effectively a "corporate death penalty", but it is never invoked. Instead, we're always told it's the fault of some "bad apples" at the top or just below it. It isn't. Replace the convicted jailbirds with new hires and they will continue to act in exactly the same way, only be better at hiding it.
-tranglos (March 11, 2012, 04:42 PM)
--- End quote ---

That is a major problem and one that really does need to get addressed by the legal system. In the United States there's a bad habit of allowing corporations to reach a settlement with the government over an alleged crime. It remains "alleged" because it never gets to court. A business is allowed to consent to whatever the government demands (fine, change of practices, industry reforms) without admitting wrong doing. It's virtually identical to the Alford Doctrine which allows you to plead guilty without admitting guilt. They call this the "I did it - but I didn't do it!" plea.

It's a lousy way to do things and it really does have to stop.

Some States are now beginning to see the problem and danger of allowing businesses to "consent" without an admission of guilt. Legislation is being drafted in a few places (it remains to be seen if it ever becomes actual law) that forbids such a plea to be accepted by the courts. If this legislation passes, businesses that refuse to plead guilty to a criminal charge will have a plea of "not guilty" entered on their behalf by the court - after which the case will proceed to trial.

Two and a half years ago, a girl here in Poland was walking by a bank and got severely injured when a slab of concrete fell off and hit her directly on the head. Sounds like a parable about a big bad bank, doesn't it,
-tranglos (March 11, 2012, 04:42 PM)
--- End quote ---

Not really. At least not to me. Did the bank deliberately toss the slab down on that unfortunate girl? Or did it's management have some culpability due to negligence or lack of other reasonably prudent behavior that might have prevented this accident? Sometimes bad things happen through nobody's direct fault.

I do know some country's legal systems have provisions for what would be called "unlimited liability" over here. (The USA, for the most part, doesn't.) So if that's how the law works where this incident occurred I can understand why people living there might feel outraged. I don't necessarily agree since I don't know all the particulars in this case. But I can understand why some people in other places with different expectation from their legal system might be upset.

The bank refuses to pay compensation. Instead - and this is why the story is on the news right now -  the bank's insurer has hired a private investigator to spy in the girl at the college where she is studying. -tranglos (March 11, 2012, 04:42 PM)
--- End quote ---

This again might be differing expectations. Although it would be considered bad form to do that here, it would also be more likely than not. But that's because whatever compensation gets paid out is based on calculations of what has 'actually' been lost. So over here it's not unusual to investigate and attempt to ascertain the true extent of someone's injury. If you're claiming to be no longer able to work or have a normal life because of an injury sustained through someone else's negligence - and then post a bunch of photos on your Facebook page showing you skiing or partying your brains out - that might raise doubts as to just how injured you are or how large your personal loss actually is.

In the US, you only get compensated based on the extent of your demonstrable injury and loss. For example: If you're left unable to earn a livelihood, the courts tend to award up to what they considered your reasonable earning potential was for the number of years you might be expected to work. Plus provision will be made for medical and related care expenses such that it won't cut into what was awarded for your financial loss. They refer to that as "being made whole." Awards for subjective "pain and suffering" are usually limited under statute. My own state puts a cap of something like $200K on what can be awarded to a plaintiff purely for their pain and suffering.


Different countries, different laws. Along with differing understandings - and expectations. :)

IainB:
...
Canadian author, professor at University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, has a fantastic (IMO) short book "The Corporation" (there's a 3 hour documentary film to go with it), where he does make that claim. In fact it is fundamental for his thesis. The thrust of the book is to show that the pathological behaviors of big corporations (of which he gives good examples, but you don't need to look far) do not happen because their CEOs are sociopaths. Rather, he says the corporation itself behaves as a sociopath since the law requires that profit be its primary goal and motivation.
...etc.
-tranglos (March 11, 2012, 08:53 AM)
--- End quote ---
Yes, superb film - though I never realised there was a book! The film changed my paradigms and helped to explain why I had always had an uneasy feeling about some of the companies/industries that I work/worked in.

In the film The Corporation, they reviewed the personality disorder "psychopathy". (A psychopath is a person with chronic psychopathy, esp. leading to abnormally irresponsible and antisocial behaviour.)
They gave this checklist of criteria to identify the disorder:
    1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
    2. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.
    3. Reckless disregard for the safety of others.
    4. Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit/financial gain.
    5. Incapacity to experience guilt.
    6. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours.

In the film, these criteria were shown to be met by many/most of the legal entities (legal persons) known as "corporations", thus demonstrating that society has legalised these special kinds of psychopaths to operate in society, where they can and do cause tremendous harm - e.g., including such things as economic dependency and control of communities, or a deadly (toxic) environmental footprint - sometimes both, as in the case of the US corporation Exide in their factory in Mexico.

Anyone watching this roughly 3-hour film documentary  - I think originally made or intended as 3 TV documentaries stitched together (and you can watch it in 23 parts on YouTube) - would find it rational, constructive, pragmatic and crammed full of facts and no religio-political ideology (e.g., greenism, warmism, anti-capitalism or communism). The film has speakers in it from various areas, including one notable corporate mogul (carpet manufacturing) who had not realised just what his huge creation was doing in the name of profitability until he happened by chance to see how one of his factories that he was visiting opened its sludge (waste) gates into the local river after dark. His management did this to conceal its pollution of the environment with its effluent. The discovery changed his entire management perspective.

Essentially, the film makes the point that a good/profitable corporation is a psychopathic legal person driven by the objective to maximise shareholder returns.
The film shows how communities depending on these monsters can, with a bit of collaboration, alter things for the better without frustrating the effective operation of the capitalist wealth-building enterprise.

Highly recommended.  

Carol Haynes:
Different countries, different laws. Along with differing understandings - and expectations.
-40hz (March 11, 2012, 10:02 PM)
--- End quote ---

Turn the bank story round - suppose the bank CEO is crossing the street and the handbrake on a parked car fails and knocks him over causing severe permanent damage.

Do you think the teacher who owned the car would get away with the 'shit happens' defence - not only would they be sued to within an inch of their life by the *anker and/or his spawn but the local authorities would also be on it like the metaphorical ton of bricks with probable jail time.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page