Why I'm a Pirate • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#511

Post by Czarnian » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 9:13 PM UTC

waxjar wrote: post #504

Czarnian wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably shouldn't have skipped the day when they talked about market saturation. Infinite supply does not imply infinite demand.

Can you elaborate on that? If there's an infinite supply of something and say, a demand for that product with 20% of the people, wouldn't the situation be worse for the entertainment companies? I left the costs etc out of the equation, which is obviously a wrong thing to do.

The supply and demand curves are independent variables derived from distinct data sets.

From Wikipedia: . . . supply is determined by marginal cost. Firms will produce additional output as long as the cost of producing an extra unit of output is less than the price they will receive.

. . . demand curves are determined by marginal utility curves. Consumers will be willing to buy a given quantity of a good, at a given price, if the marginal utility of additional consumption is equal to the opportunity cost determined by the price, that is, the marginal utility of alternative consumption choices. The demand schedule is defined as the willingness and ability of a consumer to purchase a given product in a given frame of time.

In my experience, the pro-piracy argument from economics is at best an imperfect understanding of supply and demand and at worst, the person making the argument just heard the words "supply and demand" and filled in the rest from his own imagination. The "Law of Supply and Demand" is not an actual thing. It's the juxtaposition of "Law of Supply" and the "Law of Demand"

Supply (as opposed to the supply curve) is dictated by demand, not the other way around. If the demand for a good rises, then supply will be increased to meet the demand. If demand for a good drops, supply will be decreased to the level of demand.

To your question, the entertainment companies are under no illusions that the demand curve for any particular product is going to stay the same. They expect that over time, the demand for any given thing will decrease. They know that Britney Spears new album will sell a shit-ton of copies for the first week after it drops and by the same time the following year, everyone who wanted it will have it and sales will be virtually non-existant. Their business model is geared toward a limited lifecycle for any given product, which is why they make continual investments in new products.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#512

Post by ZenPsycho » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 9:20 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #481

ZenPsycho wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I have yet to be provided with any reasonable business model that would still enable the creation of something like the Great Pyramids of Giza, or the Great Wall of China. I just don't think this idea of abolishing slavery has legs.

Well I'm no historian but I think it's possible that in the time of the ancient Egyptians the idea to abolish slavery would not be feasible whilst retaining their society. If they didn't have slaves to do the heavy lifting then it's likely that another civilization which did use slavery would simply wipe them out due to better efficiency. Slavery was abolished partly because there was enough technology to make it les…

we did. It's called /the internet/, (or euphamistically, "piracy") that's what all this fuss is about. Catch up, man!

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#513

Post by peterhost » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 11:12 PM UTC

reinhardt wrote: post #382

ThomPete wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep confusing the two. If I take an microphone from you, you don't have an microphone. If I copy a song from you, you still have the song yourself. It might be that you don't see the difference but I do and therein is our disagreement.

"If I take an microphone from you, you don't have an microphone." ..and so I have to buy a new one if we both want to have one at the same time. "If I copy a song from you, you still have the song yourself." Awesome, we can just buy one then and split the cost! But why stop there? Let's also give a copy to Tom, Dick and Harry so that each pays 20%! Now, what if we could somehow share the song and the cost with a hund…

And say, with your wife and children ? Would you share it with them or make them pay too ? And when you listen to the music, streaming, with friends at a party you throw, do they all have to pay ?

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#514

Post by peterhost » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 11:22 PM UTC

troll24601 wrote: post #373

ThomPete wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second an artist is trying to mass produce they are businessmen not artists anymore. The artist didn't make the ability to produce in large numbers and distribute at zero cost, that is what technology did. A technology that served the labels and musicians for one hundred years. Now it is turning on them and they start to complain. Bo freaking ho. People make music without making a single dime on it. Great music i…

I assume that once you pitch designs to one of your clients, it's fine with you if they photograph it, copy it, and never pay you a dime? People love design, and do great design without making a single dime on it. The rich designers are rich because professional networking, big companies and IP laws make them big. Not because they were the best of the crop. Boo Freaking Hoo. Real designers do it for love. Only phonie…

Come on ! That's exactly what happens everyday. When you pitch some creative work, you know you're throwing it to the winds and hope the pitched guy will see more benefit in hiring you than in copying it. You cannot protect art in general.

I've worked for very decent folks (google in Dublin to name one) and very undecent ones. When you are not a mainstream artist, when you are part of the profesional artists crowd (people who live from it but don't make millions) which is the overwhelming majority of artists, you don't give a damn about all this bullshit on piracy. But you do pay attention on the fact that anything that further strenghtens big corporations will in turn make your situation more fragile.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#515

Post by loup-vaillant » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 12:29 AM UTC

grellas wrote: post #212

Creative effort - or at at least any that is truly worthy of the name - takes tears, and sweat, and blood. We can marvel at the output of an artist, or a writer, or a composer, or a film maker and yet fail to focus on the years of toil that often preceded that work. And I am not here speaking of some isolated genius. I still remember the days when I was so dissatisfied with my lack of writing skills that I decided to…

You might want to separate the right to copy and the obligation to give attribution. I know of no one who would support the abolition of mandatory attribution. But abolishing the restrictions on copying itself doesn't seem so unreasonable once I say "but you would still have to name the original author!".

To me, a reasonable system would be to authorize everything, provided you give proper attribution. You can copy, but name the author. You can parody or plagiarize, but you have to say so. That way, we keep a right to recognition, at nearly zero cost to society. I think this is both morally acceptable, and economically feasible.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#516

Post by billpatrianakos » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 12:46 AM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #433

Czarnian wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't be taking their balls and going home out of pique, they'll be doing it because they have to go to work. Every hour an artist has to spend at a day job is an hour they can't spend creating. It's an hour they can't spend practicing. It's an hour they can't spend raising awareness of their work.

This is true but as a sort of counterpoint I think that sometimes once an artist gets well established they lose some of their connection to the normal world. For example a lot of rock music comes from anger and frustration of having to work a shitty job, behave in a prescribed way and having little money. As soon as you have released a few albums and have free reign to fill your nose with coke , cover yourself in ta…

I think you have a point but it's totally irrelevant. You're basically sayng that good artists should stay poor and work a day job so they can keep in touch with their roots and make good music. Well, maybe they should, maybe not but there's no connection to copyright here at all.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#517

Post by shousper » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 12:49 AM UTC

I still don't see anyone offering a viable solution..

There are a lot of variables that come into play for a generic copyright or IP law that encompasses all creative works. The first of which should probably be scope.

Physical and non-physical creations; a painting or a jpg; a photo of a painting in jpg format; a photo of a photo of a painting in jpg format.

The digital work - the internet - has changed the world forever and we're not going back. Some form of "SOPA" or "PIPA" is inevitable.

The question is simple: what are you going to do about it?

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#518

Post by joesb » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 3:40 AM UTC

rangibaby wrote: post #239

Tycho wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing an original work against the express wishes of the creator? Nope, you are dishonouring their hard work in creating the content and their intentions in making it available to the public. I supposes breaching the terms of the GPL would be 'honourable' too.

How can sharing something be wrong? Especially when it is essentially a bunch of 0s and 1s that you could write down by hand if you had the patience to? Sharing a number is wrong? I don't understand what that has to do with GPL at all.

> How can sharing something be wrong? Especially when it is essentially a bunch of 0s and 1s that you could write down by hand if you had the patience to?

Everything in the world is essentially just a bunch of atom, too. By this logic you can probably do anything you want and never be wrong, right?

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#519

Post by jiggy2011 » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 5:18 AM UTC

ZenPsycho wrote: post #512

jiggy2011 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'm no historian but I think it's possible that in the time of the ancient Egyptians the idea to abolish slavery would not be feasible whilst retaining their society. If they didn't have slaves to do the heavy lifting then it's likely that another civilization which did use slavery would simply wipe them out due to better efficiency. Slavery was abolished partly because there was enough technology to make it les…

we did. It's called /the internet/, (or euphamistically, "piracy") that's what all this fuss is about. Catch up, man!

I see, now I understand. Nobody had to design or program any of those websites or other online content. It just sprang into existence organically!

Gosh I am behind the times.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#520

Post by bdonlan » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 7:52 AM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #507

bdonlan wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked about this before on HN ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3366032 ), but I think a big problem with these discussions is people seem to assume, as an axiom, that allowing authors to control downstream copying is natural. It isn't - this principle was invented around the time the printing press made mass production of creative works possible, for reasons which were very good at the time, but which may…

Bravo. > a big problem with these discussions is people seem to assume, as an axiom, that allowing authors to control downstream copying is natural. It isn't But neither is physical ownership of things or land. We could well go back to letting the 'free market' sort it out, or conversely split everything evenly and legalize any maneuvers to do so. I'm not arguing that physical and digital goods are the same, but rath…

> Not disagreeing with the core of your posting at all, but I think you got lost in the hen analogy too.

Oh, indeed, we should apply the same rubric to physical property. But I've already analyzed a number of other cases in the post I linked, and didn't feel like bothering to analyze whether physical property is a good thing or not.

> Not sure about the phrasing of that argument. If female nurses demanded more wages than male ones, should this opinion be given 95% of the weight?

It's not about what people _demand_. Of _course_ they'll always demand something better for themselves. Here we need to weigh their demands not against the other male nurses, but rather against society as a whole, _including people other than nurses_. Does giving female nurses more pay harm the quality or cost of care for patients more than it improves it for said nurses, after weighting by population? Does it promulgate certain values that we have decided are undesirable in society as a whole (eg, gender inequality)? Does it, in the end, actually harm said nurses (perhaps their civil rights are eroded by the popular opinion shifting away from gender equality). These are the sort of questions you need to ask. It's not just, oh, within this arbitrary subpopulation, the subsubpopulation that has the greatest proportional share gets what they want.