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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

#271

Post by jarek »

res0nat0r wrote: post #247
jarek wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following this logic, if someone really, really rich creates intellectual property, it's okay for the rest of us to pirate it? It's not like they're creating it to make a living.

Not at all. Actually I am against the logic that you should be able to pirate something just because it is easy and you won't get in trouble. People create works because of copyright protections so that they can make a living.

Can you explain how "if someone really, really rich creates intellectual property, it's okay for the rest of us to pirate it" does not follow from "I'm pretty sure no one is trying to make a living by creating new HN posts with interesting content" in response to "Consider, on average do you enjoy reading HN posts? In what ways are people compensated for creating them how is copyright relevant for that compensation?"? Or am I misreading your first post?

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

#272

Post by Volpe »

onemoreact wrote: post #171
kiba wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet has made copyright law outdated.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.

The ability for 1/2 the people on the planet to distribute content without meaningful cost barriers is vary new. It's caused people to create and publish far more interesting content in a single day than you can consume in a single day. We are transiting through a tipping point where locating and filtering content is becoming more valuable than creating it. Consider, on average do you enjoy reading HN posts? In what…

Have you been to a bookstore recently?

I think you need to look up the printing press and it's relation to the copyright law debate.

The internet (on that front) is not as new and amazing as you think.

btw 1/2 the people on the planet are not on the internet it's actually more like 1/3, and of that a smaller subset 'create content'.

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

#273

Post by jarek »

gamble wrote: post #233
ap22213 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there ever a software company, or music artist, or movie studio that decided not to put out a product because of this so-called free rider problem? Just curious.

Speaking from experience, piracy has a very strong influence on how much money video game companies are willing to spend on development. Piracy is the reason that PC gamers have to put up with games that are primarily designed for consoles, with very little invested in adapting them to a PC interface. Few companies are willing to spend money on PC development when you can only expect a few hundred thousand sales.

Can you know that developers would put in more money into ports if piracy was eliminated and they had more sales at no cost to them?

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

#274

Post by evolve2k »

SUSPECT AUTHENTICITY This site consists of only this article and almost nothing personally remarkable about who the author is. It is also the users very first post to HN on an account created the day after the blackout. Anyone else find this suspicious?

willdamas do you have any affiliations you might like to declare?

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

#275

Post by alexqgb »

funkah wrote: post #110
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.

At the same time, some positions are clearly less informed than others. And there seem to a fair number of mindless idiots on either side, serving no purpose aside from getting the mindless idiots on the other side so riled up that the screaming din makes intelligent debate exceedingly difficult in any remotely public setting.

The reality is that copyright law evolved over the course of three centuries during which the ability to duplicate and distribute was exceedingly capital-intensive, and therefor, practiced only on an industrial scale, by well capitalized industrialists. Not surprisingly, the law became industrial law, with all the trappings (like expensive corporate lawyers) that are par for the course at that level, but entirely out of reach for independent citizens.

Regardless of your position, we can all agree that if the power to duplicate and widely distribute HAD been available to independent citizens for the last 300 years, then the contours of copyright law (if there even were such a thing) would look VERY different today.

In truth, copyright law - as it exists - is fundamentally and irredeemably incompatible with a democratic society in which citizens have the power to duplicate and distribute at virtually no cost. Trying to make it work would be like trying to impose a law that only permits domestic imports via rail on the state of Hawaii.

So now that we have the internet, the law needs to change - a lot. And under a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it's pure insanity to think that the people won't have a major say in deciding exactly how far property right should be allowed to go in the intellectual realm.

We already place very firm boundaries on their scope by way of Fair Use, limited terms, support for the Public Domain, and so on. And it's high time we placed a few more.

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

#276

Post by pilom »

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…

Ok I see the difference. I'll answer more to your point. When a person creates a work, they have a right to decide how that work is given to others. They can leave it in their closet. They can sell a couple copies to friends. They can give it away to everyone and say "if you like this, please give me a dollar!" They can say, "here is one copy for you but I want it back if you ever decide you don't want it any more." The creator of the work can place whatever restrictions they want on the work.

That is my basis for calling people wrong. People who pirate argue that they disagree with the creators choice for how a work should be distributed. Thus because they disagree with it, they will just take it anyway. That is why it is wrong.

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

#277

Post by dorian-graph »

yangez wrote: post #83

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…

Sometimes the HN, Reddit and other crowds forget they're not the only ones on the planet and in fact seem to make up a tiny minority—the enlightened ones. Sure, you/we may be willing to pay for an easy-to-use service though for now, because we're tech-savvy, we'll use a conglomerate of services and have it work on all our devices, etc while the mere mortal, common man struggles to avoid downloading smiley packages.

Why do the common people pirate? Because they want something without having to pay for it which is done primarily out of selfishness, laziness and wanting to pretend our actions have no consequences. On my Facebook feed, in conversations, etc they'll speak of BitTorrent or whatever and smile with an evil glint in their eyes and think they're awesome because they're getting all this content without paying for it.

The other funny thing is, you and others speak of needing to make it easier but for the common people pirating is so usually much harder—they have to keep their computers safe from malicious people and files, they need to figure out how Kazaa and BitTorrent works, they need to have the right codecs for Windows Media Player or Quicktime to play whatever the latest favourite container is, know which crack for Windows is reliable, etc. I know someone who proclaimed to be able to download torrents and she spoke of it as some great achievement and the people around her clamoured for her to download TV show x and music y.

Going down and hiring out a movie is easier for them, the majority. Going to a cinema is easier. Buying software which comes with a license is easier. Buying a CD is easier than them trying to download the whole album (Why is it do you think these people usually never download a full album and instead end up with a poor copy of popular song x and all these unnamed .mp3s?). There is the majority. Sure, the amount of people who use Steam and that is certainly relatively large but in comparison is still small.

It's nothing new to man to want something without having to earn it. Why else are 'get rich quick' or 'get amazing abs now' successful, or rather, even exist?

The post may reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority (And maybe he does have a superior sense of morals) but many of the counter-posts are simply doing the same thing for themselves.

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

#278

Post by pilom »

marknutter wrote: post #179
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

> What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9. LOL. Is that a threat?

I'm curious who your employer is and what your response would be if the parent said "What happens if nobody pays for a copy of ?"

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

#279

Post by pilom »

comicjk wrote: post #175
DrHankPym wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We certainly don't want all OSs confined to closed hardware like OS X. Ubuntu (and open source in general) works because of inverse-free-riders, "free helpers" we might call them. That seems to be a sustainable model, but it likely won't work for annoying grunt programming - note the poor driver support in many Linux distros. For some tasks, someone needs to be paid.

I disagree that it is really sustainable on an industry wide scale. Who pays the salaries of the free helpers so that they have the free time to contribute?

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

#280

Post by jonnathanson »

e40 wrote: post #223
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

What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9. That would never happen unless MS charged an outrageous sum for it. If any company finds itself in the position where nearly all of the users are pirating, then there's something wrong. They're charging too much or the DRM is too onerous, or something. EDIT: if you charge a fair price and make something available, people will buy it rath…

"EDIT: if you charge a fair price and make something available, people will buy it rather than pirate it. Louis CK and lots of other people have shown this."

There are two problems with this assertion. The first is that people's current working definition of a "fair price" seems to be $0.00. Are we really to believe that paying $1.29 on iTunes, or $0.99 on Amazon, for a DRM-free music track is "unfair"? Or that the user experience on either of those services is horrendous and painful? Come on. People pirate, in large part, because they prefer not to have to pay for something if they can get it for free. Let's be honest about that fact. If there's an impulse to "stick it to the man," so be it. I'll be the first to admit that the targets of this mentality -- the entertainment and software industries -- could use a good sticking-to. But let's not pretend that the moral-crusade argument is the sole -- or even the primary -- motivation behind most people's piracy of content. The primary reason is the price, i.e., zero.

Second, while I agree that Louis C.K.'s release shows promise, he seems to be an exception to the rule so far. Who are the "lots of other people" that have "shown" that charging a fair price leads to buying over pirating? Let's take the highly-touted example of Radiohead's pay-what-you-want release of their album "In Rainbows" in 2007. According to the post-release data, 62% of all downloaders of the album paid $0.00.[1] The next-largest segment, 17% of users, paid somewhere between $0.01 and $4.00. If Radiohead were not Radiohead -- i.e., not enormously successful prior to the release of the album -- then they'd not have been able to bear the razor-thin margin on the sale. Essentially, Radiohead gave the album away because they could afford to do so.

When Trent Reznor and Saul Williams released an album online that same year, in the Radiohead model, they gave users the choice between paying $5 and paying nothing. Approximately 154,449 users downloaded the album, and 28,322 users (about 18%) paid for it. At $5 per unit, that's a grand total of $141,610 in revenue for the album, and more likely than not, the production costs met or exceeded that revenue.

And those were hardly releases by big, onerous, anti-consumerist conglomerates, either. Those were pro-consumer, digital-friendly artists willing to put themselves out there to test precisely your proposition: that, if given the choice, people will pay. It seems that, by and large, they won't.

[1]http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/study-free-...

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