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

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

#151

Post by jmilloy »

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 think that's only part of the argument. The other part is that, regardless of what's right or wrong, the OP thinks that using the software/service perpetuates it, and choosing not to pay for it isn't enough.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

diiq wrote: post #150

Civil disobedience, the most puissant form of protest, is breaking a law you believe to be unjust, and suffering the consequences if necessary. If you break a law you believe to be unjust and expect to suffer no consequences, that's silly, but not immoral. If you break a law you believe is just, then you're kinda evil.

[deleted]

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

#154

Post by dino5050 »

diiq wrote: post #150

Civil disobedience, the most puissant form of protest, is breaking a law you believe to be unjust, and suffering the consequences if necessary. If you break a law you believe to be unjust and expect to suffer no consequences, that's silly, but not immoral. If you break a law you believe is just, then you're kinda evil.

Civil Disobedience doesn't involve you getting free stuff. Please don't equate piracy to civil disobedience, it cheapens the meaning of the word.

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

#155

Post by davidw »

alextingle wrote: post #125

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…

Now people downloading tons of content are "activists"?

I don't buy it. If they're doing so publicly as a challenge... maybe, but that doesn't seem like the case for many people who are doing it.

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

#156

Post by jrockway »

I disagree with this. Pirating makes the problem apparent to the MPAA; people want their products, but the existing distribution channels are not working. If people didn't pirate the MPAA's products, then the MPAA would conclude that nobody wanted their products anymore. That wouldn't result in positive change for people that like movies but want to play them under Linux, for example.

Piracy proves that DRM only hurts the people willing to pay money for the product. It has no effect on piracy whatsoever. In fact, DRM may be causing piracy.

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

#157

Post by chaz »

krig wrote: post #144
chaz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World of Goo launched on Steam and still saw 90% piracy. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-bein...

This is the kind of thing that boggles my mind. World of Goo was a huge success! How the piracy rate fits into the relative success or failure of World of Goo is not at all clear. I don't see how anyone can believe that there's a possible reality where World of Goo would be just as successful as it was with a 0% piracy rate, and where information exchange is free. You can't have both! If World of Goo had made a pitta…

I'm not saying that they missed out on 90% of their revenue (though it's fair to say they lost out on some revenue). Rather, they did everything right: a fun game that anyone can play, great press, broad distribution through multiple channels, and no DRM. And yet a huge audience still saw it fit to pirate their game.

It'll be interesting to watch the evolution of game distribution. Xbox and iOS are massively growing platforms that also bring built-in DRM that's significantly harder to circumvent.

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

#158

Post by SteveJS »

mikeash wrote: post #129
pilom wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Clearly, people think it is their choice." And that is where the author disagrees. People think it is their choice to either pay or not pay and get for free without consequences. That is wrong. If you choose to download without paying, you can't take the moral high ground because what you did is wrong.

This is just the kind of junk I'm talking about. I get that the author disagrees. The problem is that neither he nor you back it up with any reasoning. You're just declaring that you're right and that anyone who disagrees is wrong. What's the point of that? The simple fact is that copyright infringement is not a universally-agreed wrong the way e.g. murder is. If you want to convince people that it should be, that's…

An intellectual argument about morals requires a basis upon which to argue.

There are psychology researchers doing work in this area: http://www.yourmorals.org/aboutus.php

Is it moral to wear shoes into a Indian temple? How do you argue that without going circular?

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

#159

Post by VMG »

alextingle wrote: post #125

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…

What happens if everybody eats mince pie on Christmas? Life goes on as usual.

What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem

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

#160

Post by _Y_ »

TheCapn wrote: post #96
wmblaettler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Intentional or not it makes people look upon his content as immature. You're not trying to win the opinions of like minded individuals, you're trying to sway opponents and to do that you have to work on their terms (formal, coherent writing)

I'd say he was probably going for more uniqueness factor. Lack of care of capitalization, shows just that - lack of care and possible desire to break the norms.

You would be right if his goal was to impress someone but I doubt that was intention of his blog.

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