Ok. I hope I'm not going against the rules of HN discourse here but I'd like to go out on a limb and say any article in which the author doesn't bother capitalizing the first word in his sentences is not an article I'm going to bother to read. One of the few things I miss about the world before the internet is a proper adherence to grammar. If he were ESL, I would be more forgiving, but this post just smacks of lazy writing.
Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
51–60 of 334 posts
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#52The law is nothing but a piece of paper. I'm glad it exists, as it provides a framework that protects me from harm and allows me to life my live, but I feel no moral obligation at all to follow it. This style of argumentation is starting to tire me. Obviously, this author thinks piracy is morally wrong. Other people have no such moral qualms about piracy. Both points of view are fine! But implicitly or explicitly usi…
Except moral relativism is not any more defensible. Suppose the creator of a work asks you to pay for it, but a pirate chooses not to. Why shouldn't we call the pirate an asshole? They've disrespected the terms of use set by the author, as well as the author themselves.
It's that simple.
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, your boss will be happy he doesn't have to pay you. The question is how're you going to afford to live and how long will you work for someone who doesn't pay you anything? Don't get me wrong I'm for communism and intentional communities; but are you really advocating that?
Your argument makes no sense. If my boss doesn't pay me, I'm not working for him. Thus, he is no longer my boss. How is that relevant to the morality issue of piracy? Do you mean in the sense that if I pirate something, the creator of that something doesn't get paid and thus doesn't create the thing that I pirated? But that argument is backwards. If you mean that no more things will be produced in a world with piracy…
I think you summed it up perfectly. If your boss is no longer paying you, he has no right to your time. Just like with the pirated content, if you don't pay for it, you have no right to it.
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#54The only problem I have with this article is this line: "since when does that suddenly mean that you can decide that you are no longer going to pay for products that both legally and morally you are obliged to pay for, yet still use them?" Legally obliged to pay for? Yes. Morally? No. I have no moral problem with piracy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Those are the foundations of my morality. I wo…
You have no idea what you are talking about, I'm guessing this is because you have never created anything worthwhile on which your livelihood depended. I'm sure you'd be quick to whine if your employer (assuming you are old enough to work) could decide whether or not you should be paid for your work after you had done it. I hope you congratulate the next person to steal from you with a cheery "well done, that's my mo…
You have no idea what you are talking about, I'm guessing this is because you are too old to have grown up with tape trading, VHS copies of films and pirate cable. I have a contract with my employer, he is bound by that agreement to pay me. If he decides he doesn't want to, I stop working for him. If I write a book, no one is under contract to purchase and read it. I'd be happy if someone did, but I'd be foolish to assume that would happen when I started writing it.
I have created worthwhile things on which my livelihood depended, and those things have been cheerfully and rampantly pirated (piracy rates of video games estimated at +90%). And the company I worked for made great profits and paid me a nice bonus. Would it have made as much of a profit if those 90%+ of people who played the game, liked it, talked about it, reviewed it without paying for it, had never played it at all? I don't know. Would it have made more profit? I can't say. I doubt you can either.
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#55Someone mentioned 3D printers in another post and got downvoted for it. But think about it.
You invested a lot of time into creating an object everybody likes. People can get it in a online shop and it will be send to there address.
Now a clever guy scans the object with a 3D scanner and is putting the model online. Everybody can now downloading the model on The Pirate Bay and print it at home. And they all say: "fuck that online store, it is way too much hassle and costs too much".
It's a difficult discussion. Therefore I think it's way to easy to just call making a copy not stealing.
Edit: the post by randomdata: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3479581
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#56I solved this problem the "hard" way a long time ago. I don't use windows, at all, but GNU/Linux (Yeah, I'm this sort of guy, too). And you know what, as time goes by it's actually less and less of an actual problem; heck, I was even able to buy games for my box this year, thank you Humble Bundle! OK, this isn't free software, but at least you don't feel like you've been anally raped with barbed wire. And music? Well…
I agree with you but I'm voting down. There's no need to use violent rape analogies when talking about someone requiring you to activate over the phone. Turn it down a notch please.
Oh you!
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#57Are we paying for a Premium or are we paying for the thing we actually want?
They're taking things into their own hands by installed junk- and malware on my product.
They're assuming I'm a thief before I've even walked through the door. Why should I pay for the time they wasted to deal with people who do purportedly "break the law."
Moreover, it's not like with the music or software industries, these people lock themselves inside ivory towers and come out with a genius idea. Granted, there are genius ideas worth protecting, but those ideas protect themselves by their own internal integrity and passion of the thinker/creator/etc. Copyright law gives creators an artificial sense of entitlement, and the idea that their content is privileged somehow. That's the _default_ for a majority of the products we buy. And it simply isn't obviously true. There's too much clutter in the market as it stands for people to argument from absolutism like with in this article.
A majority of this copyright discussion has an unrealistic assumption about _the state of things as they are now_. There's no transparency in these products. No sincerity.
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#58Ok. I hope I'm not going against the rules of HN discourse here but I'd like to go out on a limb and say any article in which the author doesn't bother capitalizing the first word in his sentences is not an article I'm going to bother to read. One of the few things I miss about the world before the internet is a proper adherence to grammar. If he were ESL, I would be more forgiving, but this post just smacks of lazy…
you won't take 2 minutes to read the article for what it's worth, but will take 3+ minutes to write that you won't read it because he didn't capitalize his first word? haha.
edit: removed all capitalization so you can reply to me about how you won't read my comment because i am too lazy to capitalize a word.
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
The morality question isn't necessarily obvious, but the pervasiveness of a particular activity has nothing to do with its morality. Was slavery more morally correct when the majority approved of it, or at least looked the other way? Absolutely not.
Actually, it was. You can't judge the morality of practices from the past from your present point of view. You shouldn't be convicted that your morality is absolute and will always be the only correct one. Not to mention that software piracy is on a completely other level than slavery.
> You can't judge the morality of practices from the past from your present point of view.
Cultural relativism is certainly a valid school of ethical thought — one with which I happen to disagree. On matters like piracy, which is certainly less detrimental to society than slavery was, the consequences for believing what is popular and what is right are relatively low. But to suggest that you can apply this principle across the board, in all situations, is, in my view, absurd.
You're suggesting there that we cannot judge anything that has happened in the past because our views on the matter are now different. But that means we cannot judge ANYTHING that has happened EVER because, by definition, now is different from then.
> You shouldn't be convicted that your morality is absolute and will always be the only correct one.
I'm not. I'm just not convinced that, because a certain activity is widespread, it is therefore morally correct.
Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument makes no sense. If my boss doesn't pay me, I'm not working for him. Thus, he is no longer my boss. How is that relevant to the morality issue of piracy? Do you mean in the sense that if I pirate something, the creator of that something doesn't get paid and thus doesn't create the thing that I pirated? But that argument is backwards. If you mean that no more things will be produced in a world with piracy…
I think you summed it up perfectly. If your boss is no longer paying you, he has no right to your time. Just like with the pirated content, if you don't pay for it, you have no right to it.
I think the piracy "analogies" are getting out of control here.