Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it • Hacker News Board

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#61

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:33 PM UTC

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #52

kmm wrote: post #18

The 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.

I'm perfectly okay with the "Pirates are assholes" stance. I am an asshole. I admit this.

What I'm not okay with is when industry groups distort facts by trying to get one crime confused as a completely separate crime.

Make no mistake.. both are crimes, but the attempt is to bring the loaded meanings of one term to a completely different word.

It's factually incorrect, and it needs to stop.

It's that simple.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#62

Post by scott_s » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:34 PM UTC

jxcole wrote: post #51

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…

Considering how consciously-designed his site seems to be, I assumed it was a deliberate choice.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#63

Post by danking00 » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:35 PM UTC

Apreche wrote: post #5

The 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…

Are you morally obligated to not violate someone else's wishes in the general case?

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#64

Post by kingkilr » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:36 PM UTC

Not that I disagree with a word of this article, but he's accepting the premise of those two articles: that the distribution mechanisms are a worse UX than pirating. My response:

Are you high? Once upon a time I pirated content, he's an approximate recap of what my expierience looked like:

* Search pirate bay

* Look at 2000 results, none of which look right.

* Ok, found one.

* Crap it's French with Arabic subtitles.

* Ok this one looks good.

* Shit, no seeders.

* Ok, this one has seeders and is english.

* Go get a bagel because it's going to take an hour to download.

Here's the UX of Netflix, rdio, or hulu:

* Search.

* Press play.

In my time using Netflix, rdio, hulu, and last.fm for my media needs there has been one title I couldn't find.

EDIT: I'll be clear, my comments on these services apply exclusively to the US, I know nothing about the status of these services elsewhere.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#65

Post by Jugglernaut » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:39 PM UTC

kingkilr wrote: post #64

Not that I disagree with a word of this article, but he's accepting the premise of those two articles: that the distribution mechanisms are a worse UX than pirating. My response: Are you high? Once upon a time I pirated content, he's an approximate recap of what my expierience looked like: * Search pirate bay * Look at 2000 results, none of which look right. * Ok, found one. * Crap it's French with Arabic subtitles.…

Then again Netflix isn't available in Europe and there are huge holes in the catalogue of any streaming service. With that said I think Netflix will be huge in Europe or at least in my native Sweden. As for your pirate bay experience here is how it goes today: 1. Search for content. 2. Sort by seeders. 3. Click magnet link. 4. Start streaming from uTorrent.

Total time consumed maybe a minute.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#66

Post by leoedin » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:40 PM UTC

joshmanders wrote: post #58

jxcole wrote: post #51

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…

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.

It's an 85 word comment. Unless the author is unusually slow at typing (which is quite unlikely given the largely programmer-based audience here), it probably took them about a minute to write the comment.

Lack of capitalisation interrupts the way you read a block of text. People make poor design choices all the time, and this is one of them.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#67

Post by DaveChild » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

kingkilr wrote: post #64

Not that I disagree with a word of this article, but he's accepting the premise of those two articles: that the distribution mechanisms are a worse UX than pirating. My response: Are you high? Once upon a time I pirated content, he's an approximate recap of what my expierience looked like: * Search pirate bay * Look at 2000 results, none of which look right. * Ok, found one. * Crap it's French with Arabic subtitles.…

Well, that's fine for people in the US. But for everyone else (i.e., the vast majority) for whom Hulu, netflix, etc are not available, the legal onlines alternatives are for the most part crap or missing the content you want.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#68

Post by eslachance » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:42 PM UTC

My only issue here is "but don't decide to take the law into your own hands...it's not your decision."

It's unfortunate that people feel that laws are simply things that are imposed on us by above and are outside our power. You don't simply bend over for the law to screw you over. Laws are there to be changed, they are there to be improved and prevented so that we can all benefit from them in the right way.

But hey, if you want to bend over, be my guest.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#69

Post by kingkilr » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:42 PM UTC

etherael wrote: post #48

lachyg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing ethical about pirating.

There is even less ethical about financially supporting companies that tried to buy laws that would destroy the net as we know it.

So you're claiming that anyone who buys a DVD or a CD is acting unethical? Support that.

Re: Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it

#70

Post by wmblaettler » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 3:45 PM UTC

jxcole wrote: post #51

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…

It appears to be a style of his site. There isn't a single capital letter to be found. It's intentional rather than lazy, although it doesn't make it any less grammatically incorrect.