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

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

#101

Post by TheCapn » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:45 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #99

TheCapn wrote: post #94

I don't understand pirates that think downloading the content is a form of protest. If you want to make a change and win then you have to think like your opponent. This is how the greedy suits think: "Our product has sold X copies, but Y people downloaded it. That means there are X+Y people interested in my product! We must make it so X+Y people buy it and 0 download it!" NO! Stop! Bad pirates! By downloading the pro…

Stop with the disingenuous false dilemmas. A perfectly valid message is "we want what you offer on better terms". The actions strongly broadcast that message, perhaps better than just having an offering that doesn't sell. If everyone keeps playing this stupid "there can be only 2 positions in any argument" game, we end up with posts like this - completely ignorant of a multitude of other options. Stop it and consider…

My point isn't so much about how we go about things but more of a plea to have people work on their opponent's terms in order to win.

Each side on the issue is drawing their line in the sand but that line is too far from one another to ever reach a form of compromise or conclusion. There's this large valley between what the piracy community wants and what the industry is willing to give. Which side is willing to crack first? While pirates get their jollies there's still too much of a community of people that are paying for the products that keep industries afloat. Are we going to try and convert enough consumers to finally "hurt" the industry? Will that even be enough once the government tacks a law onto consumer products that goes towards the industry companies?

What about the "legal" approach. Is boycotting going to work? Is telling the companies the exact message you wrote going to change anything? Actions definitely speak louder than words but is pirating something going to send that message or will it send the message "we want what you offer"?

I agree with your statement that its not binary. Nothing is black and white in this situations. But the people vocally advocating piracy are doing no better where they say "my way or the highway".

I maybe shouldn't offer up too much opinion on the matter because there's evidence on both sides of the matter that show both progress and regression. On one hand we're seeing more services like netflix offering things on terms "pirates" want: convenient, accessible and quality. But on the other end we're seeing things like worse DRM and new bills. Have we really made progress or not?

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

#102

Post by icebraining » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:45 PM UTC

blottsie wrote: post #59

kmm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Has it been proven that "piracy" is detrimental at all to society?

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

#103

Post by thebigshane » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:46 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #99

TheCapn wrote: post #94

I don't understand pirates that think downloading the content is a form of protest. If you want to make a change and win then you have to think like your opponent. This is how the greedy suits think: "Our product has sold X copies, but Y people downloaded it. That means there are X+Y people interested in my product! We must make it so X+Y people buy it and 0 download it!" NO! Stop! Bad pirates! By downloading the pro…

Stop with the disingenuous false dilemmas. A perfectly valid message is "we want what you offer on better terms". The actions strongly broadcast that message, perhaps better than just having an offering that doesn't sell. If everyone keeps playing this stupid "there can be only 2 positions in any argument" game, we end up with posts like this - completely ignorant of a multitude of other options. Stop it and consider…

You are right technically. TheCapn is right politically.

While we may agree with you about the real reasons and motivations of the pirate, that isn't how corporations and governments look at things. I agree with TheCapn in how Big Media interprets it: theft, lost revenue.

There can be only 2 positions in a political argument, and yes, that breeds ignorance.

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

#104

Post by akg » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:47 PM UTC

> if there is no legal way for you to enjoy it, unfortunate though it is, tough. write to them. email them. call them to protest. but don't decide to take the law into your own hands...it's not your decision.

To that point, I would like to add another option: create an alternative. Things that are seemingly broken are opportunities for creating something better.

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

#105

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:52 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 does go against the rules -- you are supposed to post interesting comments. If you don't want to read it, that is fine: simply close the tab and move on. No need to make a fuss.

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

#106

Post by funkah » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:53 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…

I would say you are being equally lazy as a reader. Do you stop reading when someone writes "ain't", or uses a slang term, or something else that doesn't conform precisely to Strunk & White?

I'm not exactly willing to die on this hill, though -- the article is not very good in any case.

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

#107

Post by bluebridge » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:53 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #99

TheCapn wrote: post #94

I don't understand pirates that think downloading the content is a form of protest. If you want to make a change and win then you have to think like your opponent. This is how the greedy suits think: "Our product has sold X copies, but Y people downloaded it. That means there are X+Y people interested in my product! We must make it so X+Y people buy it and 0 download it!" NO! Stop! Bad pirates! By downloading the pro…

Stop with the disingenuous false dilemmas. A perfectly valid message is "we want what you offer on better terms". The actions strongly broadcast that message, perhaps better than just having an offering that doesn't sell. If everyone keeps playing this stupid "there can be only 2 positions in any argument" game, we end up with posts like this - completely ignorant of a multitude of other options. Stop it and consider…

That there can be other inferences from someone's behavior is not the question. They could infer from the acts of piracy many other possible reasons. However, the argument that the pro-censors are making is that they're losing money ("costing American jobs"). This is not really rational, but by pirating you do support their argument by being part of the numbers that, "would pay if forced."

Whereas if you chose from alternatives that conducted business on better terms than they would be forced to infer other reasons for losing money, such as, "we are losing money because we are assholes," and would not have the platform of lost sales to fool themselves or lobby politicians.

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

#108

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

TheCapn wrote: post #94

I don't understand pirates that think downloading the content is a form of protest. If you want to make a change and win then you have to think like your opponent. This is how the greedy suits think: "Our product has sold X copies, but Y people downloaded it. That means there are X+Y people interested in my product! We must make it so X+Y people buy it and 0 download it!" NO! Stop! Bad pirates! By downloading the pro…

> You are not making a stance by stealing it.

Stop using theft as synonym for copyright violation. When someone copies a movie, they create a new copy. They don't take someone else's copy away.

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

#109

Post by bad_user » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:55 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.…

I don't know what you're talking about, I do most of my searches on Pirate Bay only once, then sort descending by seeds (which not only indicates which is fastest to download, but also which is the most popular) ... then the download is over in 5 minutes.

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

* content not available in your area

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

#110

Post by funkah » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #25

I don't really understand these posts that simply declare that the correct choice is not to use their stuff, that piracy is wrong, and it's not your choice. I happen to agree with the overall conclusion that one should seek alternatives in these cases, but this is just an argument by shouting. It's foolish to simply declare, "it's not your choice". Clearly, people think it is their choice. If you want to convince the…

I agree. It seems folks have dug in and staked out their positions, much as they have with abortion, and are now just screaming at each other from across the chasm. Awfully stale indeed.