Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

broadmuse.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 334 posts

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

#161

Post by DrHankPym »

VMG wrote: post #159
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

You say that like it's a problem.

Look at it this way: Does Ubuntu or OS X suffer from being pirated? Not really. Windows needs to figure this out for themselves.

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

#162

Post by nessus42 »

SteveJS wrote: post #158
mikeash wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

If you ask me, the only moral arguments that aren't going to be circular are those that are based on Utilitarianism (or some similar form of Consequentialism). Of course, the parties debating then have to agree on this basic premise, or they are going to get nowhere fast. But, if you ask me, those who reject all forms of Utilitarianism are just profoundly kidding themselves. This fact is shown quite clearly by the fact that no one would accept a moral theory that results in the most miserable of all possible worlds, even if it seemed at the start that the premises of the moral theory were reasonable ones. E.g., property rights being amongst the most important rights, or what have you.

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

#163

Post by ianstormtaylor »

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's obviously a deliberate choice, there are no capital letters on his entire site. I don't know much about the OP but in the design world the style isn't that alien.

It originated in the 20s and 30s in the Bauhaus, Herbert Bayer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Bayer was one of the more prominent supporters, designing typefaces that contained no uppercase letterforms at all. He even experimented with designing entirely new alphabets that were phonetically based.

Jan Tschichold was another Bauhaus guy experimenting in the same realm. From Wikipedia: "Between 1926 and 1929, he designed a “universal alphabet” to clean up the few multigraphs and non-phonetic spellings in the German language. ... The alphabet was presented in one typeface, which was sans-serif and without capital letters."

It's interesting that it was born out of choices made to German, where they have many more capital letters in each sentence than we do in English. Regardless, it's clearly a stylistic choice, and one that the OP might even have to work harder to maintain, if he is accustomed to writing in sentence case.

There's that old saying that you must first learn the rules and then you can break them. That is exactly what is going on here, and the OP isn't unique in this. Throughout my time at design school many of my teachers, who had been educated by Bauhaus instructors, would email in only lowercase—they adopted the style. And others have adopted it from them (here's one of my design school friends' site: http://traceychan.net/ where she has).

I quite like the style myself.

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

#164

Post by VMG »

DrHankPym wrote: post #161
VMG wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You say that like it's a problem. Look at it this way: Does Ubuntu or OS X suffer from being pirated? Not really. Windows needs to figure this out for themselves.

It likely is a problem for all those people who pirate Windows

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

#165

Post by krig »

bluebridge wrote: post #145
krig wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

As an employee, you have no basis for understanding the perceived loss that piracy incurs- you are paid 100% what you agreed upon for your creative efforts. Someone else is taking the risk and losing the profit. If you went to get your paycheck and found out that it was 40% lower than what you thought, you might feel some of that self-righteous anger that businesses are espousing. More realistically the worst you wil…

Now you are making a different argument, but I can argue just as effectively against this one. :)

In my role as copyright superhero have I not only worked as an employee at companies producing copyrighted works, I have also, personally, produced and sold copyrighted works that have, to some extent, been pirated. I have yet to feel any self-righteous anger. The only anger I might feel is a certain frustration where some of these copyrighted works have not been as successful as I would have wished them to be, but I would be foolish to lay the blame on piracy. More likely, the timing was not right and the quality was not high enough to ensure success.

Any business endeavor entails risk. I would hope that my employer has factored in piracy rates and other non-specific factors in the business plan before hiring me to create a video game for him. Sometimes, things don't work out as hoped and the result is a flop. That can happen for many reasons. I have yet to see a convincing argument where piracy was the reason something did not succeed. On the other hand, I can point to numerous examples were piracy was the deciding factor that let something become a success to begin with. The currently popular example is Minecraft, which spread entirely through word of mouth. How successful would that game have been if there had been no way to send it to a friend while telling them to check it out because it's awesome? I really doubt anyone would have known about it at all.

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

#166

Post by what »

rbanffy wrote: post #108
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.

Pretty sure stealing means to take without permission or right. Just because you don't take another person's copy away doesn't mean you had a right or permission to take a copy at all.

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

#167

Post by kiba »

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…

The Internet has made copyright law outdated.

Sir, what make you think our situation is historically unique? If you read the history of copyright, you would realize that our is not so special. Rather, the current situation is a continuation of debates that started centuries ago.

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

#168

Post by arjunnarayan »

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've paid for World of Goo twice (When I first bought it when it came out, and once for the iPhone version). I've also pirated World of Goo three times. When I switched from PC to Mac; when I gave my iPod touch to my sister and installed it on my new iPhone as well (does this count as piracy? I have no idea. Its the same iTunes account running on two devices now...). And once on my Linux box when I wanted the linux version.

Does this count as piracy? Probably. I think they even have platform-free redownloads. I can't be arsed. I've paid for it. When I want it in a different version, I'll get it from the most convenient distribution channel that happens to be the pirate bay.

I also own like 4 Windows 7 licenses. But my Windows 7 computer is running a pirated version because: 1. I lost 2 of the license keys (the sticker at the bottom of the laptops burned out from heat). So much for that. I liked my home-premium install, too. But that's a non starter because the keys can't be recovered. I'm supposed to write down keys in case of this problem? What is this? 1999?

2. There are numerous version incompatibilities. 2 of my Windows 7 licenses are "academic versions" of Windows 7 unlimited because they ran some promo when it first launched that I bought. Apparently, despite being Unlimited, if you get the ISO off the pirate bay for the unlimited version, it doesn't work unless you have the academic version of the ISO. I have no idea how to get the academic version of the ISO, because the ISO downloader on MSDN academic is a Windows-only program. (At the time I had no Windows computers --- I was trying to get my first Windows 7 install up!). SO I got the same ISO from the pirate bay (the only place to get hassle-free ISOs). It's important to note that I have Unlimited-edition licenses. It's not failing because I paid for Home-premium and am trying to run Unlimited. This is different versions of Unlimited. It makes my ears bleed just how many different incompatible versions there are.

It's just a confusing mess. I'm sure I count under the piracy statistics as a pirate user. But in reality, I have 3 computers, two of which have Windows 7 installs, both "pirated". The fact that I own 4 licenses, none of which I could manage to get activated, won't come up on the statistics, will it?

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

#169

Post by learc83 »

wazoox wrote: post #122
learc83 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States speed limits are not enforced for safety. They are instead a revenue stream for local government. Relative speed kills, and if police were really concerned about safety they would prevent people from driving too slowly for traffic conditions as well as too fast. I'll give you a similar example from recent news. Over the last few years, many towns have installed red light cameras. However, many lo…

Sounds a bit too good (in the usual anti-government, libertarian style) to be true. Any reference?

Just a quick Google search, but here's an article about Fort Lauderdale removing their cameras.

http://www.browardcountyduilawyers.com/broward-county-dui/fo...

It's also not really a libertarian no government issue, because red light cameras are basically privatizing traffic enforcement.

It's no secret that companies sell these systems by promoting them as revenue generators.

Furthermore, there are plenty of other ways to decrease red light violations. The most effective is to increase the duration of the yellow light.

According to this report "Straight through violations drop 92 percent after yellow lights are extended by one second in Loma Linda, California."

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/30/3055.asp

Here's some more info on increase yellow light duration.

http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shorteni...

The reason that more cities don't do this is because it leads to a massive drop in revenue. In fact here is an article on 6 cities that were caught shortening yellow light duration to increase revenue.

http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shorteni...

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

#170

Post by comicjk »

VMG wrote: post #159
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

Since it seems to be impossible, from a technical standpoint, to prevent piracy, then maybe we have to accept the free rider problem and produce intellectual property on a public basis. One option would be a grant system, as is used in scientific research (solving the free rider "problem" that anyone can read your paper and use your research).
Post reply on HN