They are totally different. The way Music/Movies work usually it's "don't f-ing share this, you need permission".
The GPL is "we require that you share and provide freedoms to others"
In other words, copyright is usually used to block people from being good sharing neighbors. GPL requires sharing. Not sharing is wrong. So, copyright for music is against the natural tendency to be a good neighbor and people rightly blame the copyright restrictions for being awful. GPL violations means you are both infringing copyright and being a bad citizen, bad neighbor.
I'm pretty sure a significant majority would agree that generosity is an important trait for a good citizen, however. An unwillingness to share makes someone look more like an asshole.
A programmer deciding not to share the fruits of their own labor does NOT make them an asshole. The thread is about Copyright and GPL code, not everything-in-the-entire-world-that-can-be-shared.
Pretty much sure that violating a contractual agreement that you have voluntarily entered does, in fact, make you an arsehole. (Why do I have a British spell checker?)
I said "look like", not "be". I'm sure there are plenty of closed-source programmers who really are nice people who rescue puppies from trees and bake cupcakes for school fundraisers, but that doesn't change the fact that answering the question of "Hey, would you be interested in opening up the source code of your program to the public so that people can help you write it and have some way of knowing that your program doesn't have code that sets my hard drive on fire after selling all my personal information to Latvian potato farmers?" with an unwavering "No fscking way", it's pretty understandable that the people who would instead answer "Of course!" would have an impression of that programmer being selfish or perhaps even outright malicious.
What is interesting about comparing reactions to GPL copyright against music copyright? Without saying that either of the two copyright cases is right/wrong, there are major differences. In GPL copyright violation, the violation hinders sharing. In music copyright violation, the violation usually helps sharing. So the comparison is a bit meaningless.
How does it 'hurt sharing?' Maybe in the most trivial sense. The original code is still out there.
How does not paying for works not hurt sharing? If return on investment on works is being hurt then that's a demotivator for future works. Monument Valley had something like a 95% pirating rate on Android. That affects the expectations of indie devs and investors. Brushing this under the carpet doesn't change the facts.
If pirating was more under control, we'd see more innovation and top notch applications in the Android market. Instead, we see all the top notch applications go to iOS either exclusively or only to Android after they've made money on iOS and then publishers decide to push out a port because its just going to get pirated anyway. The difference between these two ecosystems is proof enough that pirating games hurts innovation, companies, and customers.
The usual argument for how nonGPL hurts sharing is that people write improvements to the open work that the original release cannot replicate, thus outperforming it. This causes people to use different (closed-source) works on different platforms, fragmenting the community and hurting sharing.
The original piece of code is left unchanged. The author can share it as much as they want.
You certainly can ask people if they want to share their own work. You can't take it for granted that people have a moral obligation to share the products of their labor. People might say if you don't agree with the license "then stop using GPL code", similar to how someone might say "then stop using copyrighted music/movies/games". It seems to me, that these statements are equivalent, but the attitudes of people are not the same.
But the people who modified the author's code didn't comply with the terms of use for that code... they took something and didn't "pay" for it... the price in terms of GPL and licensing code isn't money, but it is still payment. If a company doesn't want to pay for code that they take, they should write it all themselves or take code that doesn't require payment... GPL requires payment of including modified sources with redistribution.
You may have missed my first post. I understand all that. My point was the that people show differing attitudes to violating copyright when it comes to the GPL vs. Movies/Music/etc.
I detect a note of condescension in your comment, but I actually agree unironically: It is interesting to see people's reactions to copyright with different approaches and different situations. I think copyright is a useful tool, but I'm unhappy with the current infrastructure we have around it, so unusual cases like this help offer some perspective.
You're wrong. It's more a sense of amusement than anything else. I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm neither a GPL fan, nor a supporter of Copyright law as-is.
Well its certainly not stupid, I just thought that people have their own biases towards copyright law when it comes to GPL violations vs pirating Music/Movies/etc.
About as interesting as peoples reactions to free speech for terrorists vs civil right advocates. If we want to live in a bubble deprived from context, enforcing a share-and-share-alike principle for mega companies is the exact same thing as suing a 8 year old girl for international piracy.
You are varying two things there. Apples to apples would be comparing GPL software to proprietary software, or proprietary music/movies/games to CC-BY-SA music/movies/games.
