Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#21

Post by moe » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 12:46 AM UTC

there wrote: post #16

moe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a nice story, too. Just the other day my Macbook died; "green light of death", i.e. it's not charging and not turning on anymore (presumably the battery is dead). On the harddrive of said Macbook I have ~$300 worth of purchased iTunes movies that I cannot access anymore. I had never bothered to back them up because I was under the naive assumption I could just re-download them when needed. A service that I too…

is that really a problem with itunes? if your house burned down, you'd lose all of the movies you had on DVD. at least with itunes movies, you can legally make backups of the files.

Well, I'll flat out admit that I'm an idiot. I should have read the fine-print, they surely did tell me somewhere that I'm not allowed to re-download m̶y̶ their movies.

But then again. It's 2012. Is it really such an outrageous assumption that I'd be able to re-download digital content that I paid dearly for?

Steam lets me re-download my games as often as I want. Amazon and all ebook vendors let me re-download my books. Google let's me re-download my android apps. Apple let's me re-download my apps and mp3s.

It just honestly never occurred to me that iTunes movies would be different. When I paid $16.99 for an iTunes movie while the same DVD would have costed $9.99 I was actually mentally justifying the markup with the convenience of not having to care about backups...

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#22

Post by zcid » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 12:58 AM UTC

bostonpete wrote: post #19

there wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is that really a problem with itunes? if your house burned down, you'd lose all of the movies you had on DVD. at least with itunes movies, you can legally make backups of the files.

Sure , but houses rarely burn down. Computers crash a lot . In fact, I'd venture to say that most (or maybe close to most?) computers end up in some state where their owners either can't or think they can't retrieve data from them. Based on the likelihood of this happening to their customers, it'd be decent to let users re-download media you know they've already paid for and been given access to...

In addition to this is the commonly stated idea that you don't own a copy of a movie, you only have a license to watch it. If that's the case, I should be able to acquire the movie data assuming I have already paid for a license to watch said movie. Right now, consumers get the worst of both worlds.

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#23

Post by baddox » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:00 AM UTC

krig wrote: post #8

Brilliant, I agree with just about everything said in this post. There is no credible evidence that piracy actually damages artists, and plenty of empirical case studies where it greatly benefited them. It is horrendously disappointing to see the american government, supposedly the elected representation of the people, ignore all the scientific evidence produced and wholly adopt the viewpoint they are fed by a minisc…

The only thing I don't understand completely is his actual stance on copyright. He says he's okay with the notion, since he and many other artists benefit from it. But he quite clearly doesn't think piracy hurts artists, and doesn't seem to think that downloading poses a threat (or at least not enough of a threat to warrant taking down websites).

I agree with the latter, but I'm not sure how Coulton finds the latter consistent with the former. Perhaps he believes copyright should only apply to commercial violations, or should only require attribution, which would make since considering that his works are released under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. But does he believe other artists should be allowed to place their works under stricter licenses (i.e. ones that would allow them to sue a kid for downloading an MP3)?

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#24

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:25 AM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #20

moe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a nice story, too. Just the other day my Macbook died; "green light of death", i.e. it's not charging and not turning on anymore (presumably the battery is dead). On the harddrive of said Macbook I have ~$300 worth of purchased iTunes movies that I cannot access anymore. I had never bothered to back them up because I was under the naive assumption I could just re-download them when needed. A service that I too…

This is news to me. When looking at an iPad recently the guy in the Apple store told me that anything I bought on iTunes could be moved to a new device should I ever upgrade. So long as I have the same AppleId (email?) What else is non-transferable? Books? Music? Apps? (Can iDevices do other things?)

[deleted]

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#25

Post by cstejerean » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:27 AM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #20

moe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a nice story, too. Just the other day my Macbook died; "green light of death", i.e. it's not charging and not turning on anymore (presumably the battery is dead). On the harddrive of said Macbook I have ~$300 worth of purchased iTunes movies that I cannot access anymore. I had never bothered to back them up because I was under the naive assumption I could just re-download them when needed. A service that I too…

This is news to me. When looking at an iPad recently the guy in the Apple store told me that anything I bought on iTunes could be moved to a new device should I ever upgrade. So long as I have the same AppleId (email?) What else is non-transferable? Books? Music? Apps? (Can iDevices do other things?)

It's transferable, but not necessarily by downloading again from Apple. You just back up your downloads and then you can transfer them from device to device.

Not that it makes any sense not to allow people to download stuff multiple times, especially when said stuff is DRM'd, but try reasoning with the movie studios.

It might get better in the future though. Music is now mostly DRM free and you can re-download directly from iTunes. That changed not that long ago. If the music industry can change there's hope for the movie industry as well.

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#26

Post by Wilya » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:03 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #23

krig wrote: post #8

Brilliant, I agree with just about everything said in this post. There is no credible evidence that piracy actually damages artists, and plenty of empirical case studies where it greatly benefited them. It is horrendously disappointing to see the american government, supposedly the elected representation of the people, ignore all the scientific evidence produced and wholly adopt the viewpoint they are fed by a minisc…

The only thing I don't understand completely is his actual stance on copyright. He says he's okay with the notion, since he and many other artists benefit from it. But he quite clearly doesn't think piracy hurts artists, and doesn't seem to think that downloading poses a threat (or at least not enough of a threat to warrant taking down websites). I agree with the latter, but I'm not sure how Coulton finds the latter…

Copyright does quite a lot more things than just enabling restrictions on distribution. There's the right to be credited, some limits on derivative works, and limitations to commercial violations. I suppose not every musician would be pleased to find their music used as the soundtrack of a porn movie without their knowledge, for example.

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#27

Post by spicyj » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:16 AM UTC

moe wrote: post #13

warfangle wrote: post #9

> don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. I ran into this a few months ago. I was bored and slightly drunk from brunch on a Saturday afternoon, and got it in my mind that I’d catch up on the final four Harry Potter movies. Whatever. That it was Harry Potter isn’t necessarily the point. Three of these films - Order of the…

I have a nice story, too. Just the other day my Macbook died; "green light of death", i.e. it's not charging and not turning on anymore (presumably the battery is dead). On the harddrive of said Macbook I have ~$300 worth of purchased iTunes movies that I cannot access anymore. I had never bothered to back them up because I was under the naive assumption I could just re-download them when needed. A service that I too…

If you contact Apple support they'll let you redownload all of your purchases.

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#28

Post by burgerbrain » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:20 AM UTC

boredguy8 wrote: post #11

warfangle wrote: post #9

> don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. I ran into this a few months ago. I was bored and slightly drunk from brunch on a Saturday afternoon, and got it in my mind that I’d catch up on the final four Harry Potter movies. Whatever. That it was Harry Potter isn’t necessarily the point. Three of these films - Order of the…

"I don’t get how this is hard to understand." Because the 'other side' doesn't understand why you think they have to make it easy for you to buy Harry Potter 7.1 and if they don't, why you think you get to circumvent their processes. You wanted to give them money on your terms. They want you to give them money on their terms. I think that sums it up.

"They want you to give them money"

Clearly not.

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#29

Post by burgerbrain » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:24 AM UTC

omonra wrote: post #6

twelvechairs wrote: post #4

> making money from art is not a human right. This is an excellent point (and paragraph) - I wish more people understood this (although it is probably scary to many in the startup community).

Is ability to charge money for any labor a human right?

It is a human right to only work voluntarily. The alternative is slavery.

So yes, it is.

Re: Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

#30

Post by eggspurt » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:30 AM UTC

Hmm, isn't Jonathan's blog post just an advertisement for a few e-commerce links on his website - catering to anti-SOPA-crazed technologists that will upvote this post and buy his songs while they're there?

Anyway, people don't change overnight. Once you train people they can find pirated content for free, they'll continue doing this - and it's very hard to compete with a torrent search site.