Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

news.careers360.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 62 posts

Re: How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

#11

Post by JumpCrisscross »

danuker wrote: post #9
adamc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced music prices were "unfair" -- they were higher than people wanted to pay. There is a distinction.

What is a fair price? There is no such thing. An economically optimal price is one that maximizes total profit. If it's too high, fewer people will buy the product, which might reduce profit. If it's too low, the profit margin will be small in spite of lots of units sold.

> What is a fair price? There is no such thing

It's subjective, but that doesn't make it nonexistent. I pay $10/mo. for Spotify. I'm happy with that. I think I get great value for that money spent. If someone came out with an $8/month streaming service, I'd scrutinize it fairly closely before contemplating switching.

Re: How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

#12

Post by dragonwriter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
danuker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a fair price? There is no such thing. An economically optimal price is one that maximizes total profit. If it's too high, fewer people will buy the product, which might reduce profit. If it's too low, the profit margin will be small in spite of lots of units sold.

> What is a fair price? There is no such thing It's subjective, but that doesn't make it nonexistent. I pay $10/mo. for Spotify. I'm happy with that. I think I get great value for that money spent. If someone came out with an $8/month streaming service, I'd scrutinize it fairly closely before contemplating switching.

> It's subjective, but that doesn't make it nonexistent.

Yes, it does. Subjective assessments have no objective reality.

Re: How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

#13

Post by slaymaker1907 »

danuker wrote: post #9
adamc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced music prices were "unfair" -- they were higher than people wanted to pay. There is a distinction.

What is a fair price? There is no such thing. An economically optimal price is one that maximizes total profit. If it's too high, fewer people will buy the product, which might reduce profit. If it's too low, the profit margin will be small in spite of lots of units sold.

Only if you assume humans are purely self centered rational agents. In practice, many people do care about what a "fair" price is and don't just charge as much as possible in pursuit of profit.

Re: How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

#14

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dragonwriter wrote: post #12
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is a fair price? There is no such thing It's subjective, but that doesn't make it nonexistent. I pay $10/mo. for Spotify. I'm happy with that. I think I get great value for that money spent. If someone came out with an $8/month streaming service, I'd scrutinize it fairly closely before contemplating switching.

> It's subjective, but that doesn't make it nonexistent. Yes, it does. Subjective assessments have no objective reality.

> Subjective assessments have no objective reality

Subjective assessments drive political preferences and policy, to say nothing of human relations and experiences.

Re: How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

#17

Post by adamc »

danuker wrote: post #9
adamc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced music prices were "unfair" -- they were higher than people wanted to pay. There is a distinction.

What is a fair price? There is no such thing. An economically optimal price is one that maximizes total profit. If it's too high, fewer people will buy the product, which might reduce profit. If it's too low, the profit margin will be small in spite of lots of units sold.

This is an absurdly limited point of view. If I charge 3x as much as other vendors, then force them to raise their prices by firebombing businesses that don't comply, it might (conceivably) maximize profit, but most people would think it unfair, largely because it was founded on unfair restraint of trade.

I don't think the prices on music were unfair before. No one has to have music, and there was no evidence that the prices were enforced by unfair practices. They were just higher than people wanted to pay.

But most people would say that Enron's manipulation of energy markets was quite unfair.

Re: How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

#19

Post by dqpb »

danuker wrote: post #9
adamc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced music prices were "unfair" -- they were higher than people wanted to pay. There is a distinction.

What is a fair price? There is no such thing. An economically optimal price is one that maximizes total profit. If it's too high, fewer people will buy the product, which might reduce profit. If it's too low, the profit margin will be small in spite of lots of units sold.

> An economically optimal price is one that maximizes total profit.

The economically optimal price is the one that maximizes total value in the long run.

Re: How Indian lawyers, scientists gave Sci-Hub its first legal defense team

#20

Post by scns »

adamc wrote: post #5
anthropodie wrote: post #2

Suppose SciHub looses cases in multiple countries and has to shutdown. What prevents someone from putting entire data as torrent? Piracy is result of unfair prices. Music used to be pirated all the time but then Spotify came along with subscription based services. I don't know anyone who still pirates music. Maybe people with IP and copyright claims should learn from Music industry.

I am not convinced music prices were "unfair" -- they were higher than people wanted to pay. There is a distinction.

Hm, unfair to whom. Do you know how much the artists actually receive?

There are clauses from the days of shipping vinyl to record stores, regarding breakage of disks. The label keeps a percentage (5% - 10% can't remember correctly), for broken disks. They still use these clauses decades after they have lost any basis in reality.

The Police financed the recordings themselves, to get higher royalty percentages.

Have you read about majors suing artists for damages after their albums flopped?

How much do the people earn that made the music in the first place? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/19/zoe-keati...

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/12/06/zoe-keating-spot...

Further reading here, published 21 years ago: https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

Post reply on HN