131–140 of 334 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What you and most others miss is that people don't really care about the right of things when they pirate. It's a non-issue.
The author has a fundamental misunderstanding of what laws mean, and how they change. In England, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day? Why? Because centuries ago England was governed by a despotic, fundamentalist Christian regime that did not approve of Christmas celebrations. Should I then refrain from eating the mince pie? No. I and millions of my fellow countrymen eat mince pies, and most are complete…
There are so many things that are technically illegal. There are too many laws that aren't up to date with what people expect to be able to reasonably do.
Obviously it's not a great signal on price - piracy's always going to have the lowest price - but knowing there's demand means you can start to adjust your strategy to try to capture some genuinely lost sales.
This article is interesting to read and think about from a theoretical perspective. Practically, though, it is completely and utterly useless. Fact 1: Pirating is possible and fairly easy across the board. Fact 2: Some content creators try to limit access to maintain "exclusivity" or to keep margins high. These guys get destroyed by piracy. Fact 3: Other services strive to make it as easy as possible to get their pro…
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-bein...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't you see it as immoral or stealing? These companies spend millions on these movies, countless people work on them and depend on them for their wages (not just the actors, but the support crew, the caterers, the make up artists, the lighting crew, editing, post production, script writers, casting agents, location scouts, etc etc). They then charge people a small price for the right to view their work (either…
Because basically, I don't think that the trouble they go to creates an obligation in me in regard of my network, my hard drive, my screen.
Can we stop submitting these things? This article, without even touching on annoying design and style choices, is bad. It contributes nothing to the discussion of copyright. It is four paragraphs long, and devoid of useful thought.
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It's short enough, let's tear through it:
"over on hacker news, there are two articles in which the authors are justifying their decisions to pirate music and windows because their respective industries don't make it as easy to get hold of their content as the pirate bay does. as the first author argues "because you are not offering a good service" he is going to pirate his music and films from now on and "the time has come for you to fuck off", the second writes "i am not buying any more software" until microsoft "address the service problem that is causing piracy". "
Okay, so, first paragraph is sloppy quoting of the articles mentioned this week at HN. The hackjob of quoting misses the flavor of the original articles, and skips some nuances. That would be fine--but it took the author an entire paragraph to sum up what could've been said in one line: "Here and here are two articles causing discussion about piracy on Hacker News." Done. Finished. Had they done that, I could've gotten through their miserable little post that much faster.
" sorry what? yes, drm is broken. yes, copyright doesn't work very well. yes, pirating is easier. 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? i am steering clear of the word 'steal' because many will argue that it is not 'stealing' under the strict definition of the word; the content creator still has the song, software etc. "
The author says, in effect, "suck it up, stop pirating."
The author does so with some hilarious painful-to-read phrasing. I'm not asking for art, mind you, in all posts--I just prefer that the written word (especially when submitted to HN!) have something behind it more than mallspeak.
In addition to being worded like a petulant teenager angry about missing the last ship to the Pirate Bay, the author claims that there is a moral obligation to pay for material, but doesn't explain what that obligation is or from what it derives.
The author doesn't so much assail the idea of piracy as show a sort of slow-witted wonder that you can get copies of things without buying them. Drooling into the keyboard and blinking, it slowly dawns on the imbecile that people can do this. The author comes dangerously close to diverging onto a useful thought about the nature of stealing and how it applies to copyright infringement, but then manages at the last minute to pull ignorance from the jaws of victory and flits off to the next paragraph.
" if you want to protest the crappy way these companies treat their customers, don't buy their stuff. but you can't have your cake and eat it. protest by not using or having it at all. they have something you want; even if you don't agree with their methods, it is still theirs to decide what to do with. all you are doing is supporting the industry in their drive to stamp out pirates; instead, support legal ways of obtaining this content through spotify and others. "
The author makes several assertions again here: companies treat their customers badly, piracy isn't effective, piracy somehow supports the industry, companies can decide what they can do with their IP unconditionally, etc.
This is talking-point vomit, a pile of mealy-mouthed and poorly-articulated sayings lacking backing or explanation. This contributes nothing to the conversation, and serves only to underscore the intellectual laziness of the author.
These claims are all very interesting and exciting to debate, mind you, but that requires an attention span and maturity that the author seems to simply not have.
" 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. "
At last, sweet release!
The author has finished the article with a stunted attempt at encouraging protest, and yet again manages to miss a wonderful opportunity to consider the role of piracy as peaceful protest. The author also makes some baseless assertions without provided reasoning in regards to "taking the law into your own hands" and its desirability--again, an interesting philosophical starting point lost on the moron penning the paragraph.
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Look, I'm not going to launch into crazy copyright and anti-copyright discussion here, but for fuck's sake can we start posting articles on this topic that try to display critical thought?
This is insulting.
One can say that record labels brought the piracy problem on themselves by looking to create barriers to content while pirates worked to create access to content. However, it's erroneous for an individual to argue that he has a right to pirate because the industry created barriers to their own content. It's counterproductive to the anti-censorship movement. Instead, we should focus on the fact that the music industry…
Competing interests will often be in conflict, and that's what we're seeing in this debate. You can safely translate "a right to piracy" to "no moral obligation to respect copyright". Once the moral argument is dismissed, all that remains is pragmatic conflict resolution.
One side could be destroyed, a compromise could be found, or a protracted conflict could ensue. In any case, moral arguments from either side are mostly useless.
http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3485295
You can have your opinion on laws, but not the right to defy them
I think it's worth bringing up a factor mentioned here a while ago - Piracy serves as a useful market signal. The fact that people are pirating content means there's demand - if they're pirating it, but nobody's paying for it, that means the rights holders are creating a product people want, but the price & delivery mechanism aren't right yet. That's an awful lot better information than just that people aren't buying…
Free is magic. It's place on the supply/demand curve is far away from "one cent."
That said, I think that in general you are right. We just need more publishers to get brave and try experimenting with pennies-on-the-dollar sales and other stuff.
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.…
Agreed that the UX of existing sites have much better UX than the pirating options. However a much more common experience on Netflix is: * Search * Whoops, this movie isn't available on streaming. On Hulu: * Search * Only the last four episodes are available. The content distributors are strangling themselves because they're trying to protect their existing means of distribution and refuse to adopt new ones that peop…
In 2008 Starz and Netflix entered into an agreement where Netflix would be able to license and distribute Starz media for $30 million. Said contract expired, Netflix offers $300 million to renew, and Starz rejects the offer under the premise that their content is worth more.
Now Starz, like HBO (eg. HBO Go), is planning to roll out their own streaming service--which I would say is both an attempt to protect their means of distribution as well as an effort to adopt to new models.
As an aside, I tried to use HBO Go a few weeks ago...and was prompted to enter the details of my cable tv service in order to gain access. I didn't have the time/patience to proceed and decided to read instead.
All I can say is if every content distribution company expects users to pay a separate fee, etc, for streaming content they're SOL. Evidence of Netflix, Hulu, iTunes and the like show that people prefer one-stop shopping.
Edit: typo