Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#1

Post by jrd79 » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 6:48 PM UTC

Computer programmers and other people involved in the development of new technology generate extremely valuable IP on which most of them depend for their living. Some depend on this directly by selling what they produce and others do so indirectly by selling advertising space or consulting services. More than in almost all other fields (music and movies being clear exceptions), technologists depend on a proper respect for intellectual property to prosper.

And yet on Hacker News and most other technology-oriented forums and news sites, the overwhelming consensus seems to be pro-piracy. This strikes me as childish and silly and I honestly don't understand how people - especially people who should be smart enough and thoughtful enough to think clearly on the subject - can have such wrong-headed views on something so important to them.

Piracy is immoral and corrupt (the Pirate Bay guys made a bundle off of other people's software, music, and movies), it discourages innovation and has strong anarchistic elements to it. Other than selfish convenience for the pirate, what possible justification does it have?

Can anyone explain why they support piracy without resorting to misapplied notions of free speech?

We who create should be united in defending our rights to control and to profit from our labors.

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#2

Post by megaman821 » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 6:57 PM UTC

I don't think the majority of people are pro-piracy, it is just that they are "hackers". Hackers try to figure out how to hack things to their needs.

Online music started with Limewire and ended with iTunes. I feel this is the fate of a lot of other forms of media. A frustrated group of hackers will thwart the current system until there is a viable market option. Most people, if given the chance, will pay for what they want.

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#3

Post by _delirium » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 6:59 PM UTC

I don't think the consensus here is particularly strong in any direction.

As for reasons, it varies by person, but a few common reasons for not being hugely in favor of "intellectual property" despite working in an intellectual area:

1. Even if well-meaning originally, intellectual property may actually harm innovation and innovators in certain areas (especially with the terrible state of patent law, but also with very long copyright terms).

2. Not everyone buys the analogy with property (many libertarians, for example, don't). That doesn't mean copyright should be abolished (even if it's not really property, it could still be a useful concept), but it does put it in a different category.

3. Objections to the manner in which governmental police and investigatory power is used to enforce it. Unlike with normal property, fully enforcing intellectual property laws requires quite invasive government powers, since people can violate them without even venturing off their own property (copying music between USB drives, say).

4. Objections to the collateral damage caused by private-sector attempts to control copying, either technical measures like DRM, or contract-law measures like EULAs, especially since these restrictions tend to be aimed at stopping even legitimate tinkering, which is important to many hackers.

I would tone down the language if I were you, though, if you want to have an actual discussion (if this was just an opportunity for a rant, then never mind). Your post comes off as condescending and belligerent, yet you don't appear to actually have a strong command of the relevant issues or even awareness of the arguments, which is a poor combination.

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#4

Post by withoutasound » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 7:17 PM UTC

I'm guessing you're an uppity 16 year old who just discovered Ayn Rand. Who else would make such sweeping generalisations?

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#5

Post by iwr » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 7:24 PM UTC

Intellectual property is a misnomer, or at least a weaker form of property. It's not about free speech, but rather about the particulars of owning an idea which may reside in another mind. Calling it theft outright is framing the question. Of course people are against theft, but if their ideas of theft are different, they are referring to different things.

Furthermore, there are three distinct cases where IP is understood differently: trademarks, copyright and patents (I suspect you are referring to copyrights). Some people may be against only one or two forms of IP, while accepting the others.

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#6

Post by celoyd » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 7:25 PM UTC

People who do math (in a large sense that includes programming) often have a streak of Platonic realism: the idea that ideas are less invented than discovered.

Lots of important code boils down to identities:

    a^0.5
    == sqrt(a)
    == (b such that b×b == a)
    == (a certain line of x86 assembler)
    == (a certain line of python)

Or equivalences:

    Turing machine
    == lambda calculus
    == Java Virtual Machine
    == Haskell
    == Conway’s game of life
    == Excel

Or other relations:

    worst-case runtime of X ≤ worst-case runtime of Y

The notion of owning necessary relationships between concepts is at best problematic. It’s not helped by the fact that a lot of pretty obvious ideas get protection. The first one that comes to mind is US patent 4941193, which covers doing fractal image compression in the way that any competent programmer hearing the phrase “fractal image compression” would immediately imagine. There’s no incentive to license that kind of patent to the little guys, and the little guys don’t want to do the paperwork anyway, so a lot of things like fractal compression have stagnated because someone owns the predicate that images are often self-similar.

This is obviously not the whole story. There are benefits to society, and specifically to programmers, from moderate IP protection. But I think it’s is a reasonable answer to your question. The default attitude for hackers seems to be that anyone should be able to implement anything in the literature for any purpose. If you have the technical ability to circumvent what you see as immoral restrictions on knowledge of the structure of the world, you’re likely to do it.

(I’m not trying to argue for this view in this comment, only to point it out.)

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#7

Post by gdl » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 7:31 PM UTC

A large part of the issue is that many major copyright owners have proven themselves to have very little regard for law or morality themselves. When the RIAA blackmails people (with very little evidence against them) and forces them to pay a few thousand dollars for a settlement or be sued into oblivion by a battalion of corporate lawyers, the masses will hardly defend the RIAA. Or when they try to write laws to spy on and censor the entire Internet for their direct gain, many people get very upset at the implications. When game publishers sell games that are so heavily DRM'd as to be difficult to play legitimately while still trivial to pirate, people shrug and get the pirated copies if they want to be able to play.

On the other hand, there have been lots of stories where creators have open discussions with pirates, without reflexively making them the enemy, and are rewarded by respect and increased sales. Pirates are people too, and many act with a higher moral compass than you might expect, though it may differ from your own.

I think it's not so much that piracy is seen as good, but that it's not as evil as some would make it out to be, and the other side makes themselves so unsymphathetic that nobody cares about them.

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#8

Post by makecheck » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 7:38 PM UTC

There are many things in the world that can be used for good and bad, and supporting the existence of those things does not mean that you're in favor of the bad parts.

Some companies that sell content have decided to use a heavy-handed approach (DRM), demonstrably punishing their paying customers. They are not looking for new ways to make perhaps even more money in the Internet age; they are only trying to preserve what is arguably a dying business model. They ignore legitimate questions like, "if I can't afford this and you give it to me for half price, and I can easily share it with 10 of my friends, will that generate sales you wouldn't have otherwise seen"?

The "pirates" are a bit like a rally to restore sanity: they provide what people actually want (which is NOT "free movies"), and frankly content companies have been too stupid to realize this outcome. Not everyone cares if a download is free. What they really want is freedom from the bullshit that is digitally shoved into DVDs these days (like previews you can't skip, commercials when you've already paid for content, and other restrictions on what you can do). They want to play something they've bought on one device, and not have an error box come up when they shamefully try to play it on another device that they also own.

If you're wondering why artists don't see much money, take a look at the insultingly small percentages they get from their rich overlords.

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#9

Post by marssaxman » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 8:17 PM UTC

Violating the terms of a copyright license by making an unauthorized copy is not the same thing as theft. If I steal your car, I have one car and you have none; if I copy your data, I have a copy of your data and so do you. You have not been deprived of property, so there is no theft.

If you offer to sell me a copy of your data for $X, but I decline, then choose to get a copy of the same data from someone else for free, I have stolen nothing, since you still have your data. What you have lost is the opportunity to offer me a lower price, which I might have accepted. This is not the same as theft, and I am far less sympathetic to this vaporous loss of potential than I would be to an actual loss of goods or services.

As far as your belief that intellectual property can be extremely valuable, or that people involved in the development of new technology necessarily depend on it for a living, that is commonly claimed but does not correlate well with my experience. My career only took off when I started giving my software away - I made more money selling my consulting services than I ever did by selling licenses for my software, and freeware gave me a better reputation than shareware ever had.

Conversely, for a stretch of about five years not one line of code I wrote actually shipped, because the companies that owned the rights to my code changed strategy, went out of business, or simply lost interest in the project. I have heard similar stories from other developers. Think of all that work gone completely to waste, because it was all locked up behind a wall of "intellectual property!"

As far as software patents go, they have only negative value: they are worse than a zero-sum game. Patenting a software idea is a great way to make sure no software developer will ever read about it, since nobody wants to be liable for triple damages due to willful infringement. The only value a software patent has to anyone is the opportunity to sue a large corporation.

In summary, I don't agree that intellectual property necessarily has significant value, and I don't agree that violating pointlessly restrictive copyright licenses is necessarily harmful. Nor, for that matter, do I think "strong anarchistic elements" are a bad thing.

The justification is that making it easier for people to get what they want is generally a good thing. Violating the artificial gatekeeping privileges of an arbitrary rightsholder in order to increase the general happiness sounds like it is probably a good thing most of the time.

Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?

#10

Post by earl » Sat, Nov 27, 2010, 8:52 PM UTC

Speaking only for myself: I strongly support people sharing as much music and whatever else as they want because the RIAA / MPAA are thieves. Those organizations have strongly supported making people pay per device they own which is just fucking ridiculous. If I buy a CD, I should be able to listen to it in my car, on my ipod while walking, on my computer at work, and on my stereo at home. Until the RIAA/MPAA/artists start advocating for reasonable laws, I just can't be bothered to care. Not to mention their insistence on DRM.

Frankly, I view this as a solved problem -- itunes has demonstrated that as long as prices are reasonable and the service is extremely convenient, most people will just pay instead of bothering with p2p stuff.

Since I largely view Congress as owned by Disney et al, I view p2p effort / thepiratebay et al as a more than justified counterbalance.