I have a bad feeling about this • Hacker News Board

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#181

Post by Wilduck » Fri, Feb 10, 2012, 3:48 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #164

Wilduck wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> knowledge is a non-rivalrous non-excludable good You sound like you know what you're talking about here. What you're claiming is that digital media is a public good. I can live with that definition. It's certainly non-rival, and in practice is fairly non-excludable. You then go on to claim that companies should just find a way to survive without copyright. The problem with this approach is that the creation of thes…

Copyright is monopoly protection granted on your works by the demos on the assumption of that work becoming freely available to the public domain in a reasonable time. If your work is not going to enter the public domain then there's no contract - the state then is enforcing a monopoly against the interests of the people. Disney can make a profit of 100s of millions on a movie within a few years. They don't need anyt…

> This suggests an assumption that the state should grant a monopoly.

That wasn't my intention. I wanted to emphasize that it already has. I think the state should work to ensure the creation of public goods and I think that they should relax copyright laws.

I'd love to read a rigorous analysis of this idea:

> Disney can make a profit of 100s of millions on a movie within a few years. They don't need anything like as much as 20 years. > They will of course retain their trademarks, and I think this is only right in a realistic IP environment.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#182

Post by angersock » Fri, Feb 10, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

shoham wrote: post #167

angersock wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you do realize that the information is free to duplicate, right? And that there is no way of ensuring you get paid for rent on a resource you can't control the duplication of--at least without causing massive headaches for everyone else? Dude, sell tickets to shows, sell merch at shows, don't perform unless paid before hand. If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then im…

You're an ass. No, it's not FREE to duplicate. It costs money to duplicate and distribute licensed copies of other people's work. And it's not information, it's art. The massive headache you feel is called honor. You're from a culture that now calls stealing liberty. Brave new world, indeed. Dude, sell tickets to shows, sell merch at shows, don't perform unless paid before hand. You're an ass. If all else fails, cons…

"No, it's not FREE to duplicate."

cp ShohamsGreatestFlames.txt ShohamsGreatestFlames2.txt

Man, that was really really cheap. Free even.

"It costs money to duplicate and distribute licensed copies of other people's work."

Notice that I didn't say anything about licensed copies of other people's work. Duplication--the raw act as shown above--of digital data is effectively free.

Your profits derive from your ability to control the scarcity of your product, right? If a publisher licensed your music and stood next to you at your shows handing out your album for free, you'd be boned, right?

The fact here is that these people can and will make duplicates of your work, and there is nothing you can do to stop them. It's not costing them enough not to, and anything you do to increase that cost--pushing for rediculous prison terms, making blank CDs have a big tax, forcing ISPs to limit service, etc.--hurts society far more than your loss hurts you.

"And it's not information, it's art."

To my capture card in the studio, to my sound board mixing analog signals, to my microphone receiving vibrations in the air, reading a phonebook and playing a song are functionally equivalent. To the hard disk, the bytes look the same. Metadata about "art" or "not art" is lost in the medium.

There may be a great philosophical difference between art and information, there may be a moral difference about how one ought be treated as opposed to the other--but there is no practical difference, and getting paid is about getting practical.

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#183

Post by figglesonrails » Fri, Feb 10, 2012, 5:26 PM UTC

shoham wrote: post #167

angersock wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you do realize that the information is free to duplicate, right? And that there is no way of ensuring you get paid for rent on a resource you can't control the duplication of--at least without causing massive headaches for everyone else? Dude, sell tickets to shows, sell merch at shows, don't perform unless paid before hand. If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then im…

You're an ass. No, it's not FREE to duplicate. It costs money to duplicate and distribute licensed copies of other people's work. And it's not information, it's art. The massive headache you feel is called honor. You're from a culture that now calls stealing liberty. Brave new world, indeed. Dude, sell tickets to shows, sell merch at shows, don't perform unless paid before hand. You're an ass. If all else fails, cons…

If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then improve or leave.

I think you shouldn't write this off as "you're an ass". It's rough to hear "you likely won't get full payment for the product itself because it can be pirated", but that is the curse of massive amounts of processing power, digital information, and storage space. It doesn't mean you can't be successful, it just means that traditional cash cows such as prints/CD sales are harder get. You used to be able to record a song once, and sell that song indefinitely. Milk the cash cow. Now, in a world where you could potentially (but not likely) make zero due to piracy, you can't rest on your laurels with an awesome work. It's strange, and like I said in a different post, not unlike software, but in the end, you can fight the whole internet and increasing technology or adapt (or die).

Re: I have a bad feeling about this

#184

Post by figglesonrails » Fri, Feb 10, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

shoham wrote: post #170

figglesonrails wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that consumers can be sheep. Here's the problem though: the (BIG) producers are using various means inaccessible to smaller ones to change laws. And not in small way. And not in a way that benefits consumers. People who get uptight about independent artists having their works digitally copied probably don't realize that this is a good thing. It means they are popular, it means people desire them, it means ther…

What I didn't like specifically was "screw the producers". I'm optimistic about the future of my craft, for sure, but I'm not on the happy talk information is free bandwagon, I'm just not. If I mark a tune as CC, so be it, otherwise it's All rights reserved. I don't encourage piracy, even if it's 'good for me', and that's a traditional system worth making peace with, called an honor system.

I don't think the "pure piracy" model will ever come to pass, but I don't see piracy going away either. The people who seek to eliminate piracy can only do so with modest efficacy by resorting to systems that severely limit freedom and have the implicit assumption that the user is a potential criminal instead of a patron. I respect copyrights the best I can, and I don't see copyright laws disappearing, I'm simply stating that I wouldn't rely on today's model of business for tomorrow when there are clear cracks and a lot of legal question marks and civil disobedience. If nothing else, assume piracy will happen and diversify (i.e. don't risk house and home on CD/print sales).

Trust me, plenty of people thought Red Hat was crazy for "selling" Linux when you could just download the source and compile it yourself. Heh, turns out that building 10,000 packages using a 233 MHz CPU takes a few days, and isn't nearly as convenient as an autoupdate service that works on a whole network of PCs.