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Paul Graham has lost the plot

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Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#141

Post by angersock »

redthrowaway wrote: post #126
angersock wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Are you unable to understand the difference between making a statement with unspecified assumptions, and making a crafted argument with carefully specified axioms and clear logical reasoning--while also noting obvious facts about the real-world implementation of the topic you debate? How many songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published? How many love poems are written and not saved? Content is…

>Are you retarded? Please try to avoid this.

Fixed.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#142

Post by jamesaguilar »

guga31bb wrote: post #120
citricsquid wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it. > Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value. What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say…

> If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music I think you've missed the parent's point. We have left the world where pirating is impossible. The question is how to deal with it. Thinking in unrealistic hypotheticals does little to inform the debate.

It informs the debate in the sense that it confirms music does have value. It's sophistic to claim that music has no value because people can avoid paying for it, which is I think the point your parent was trying to make.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#143

Post by garyrichardson »

citricsquid wrote: post #92
redthrowaway wrote: post #81

The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic economics: Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value . pg was right in pointing out that the content industry is built on the economics of scarcity, and that this scarcity no longer exists. You could charge someone to see a movie in a theatre when doing so was the only way to see the movie. You c…

And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it. > Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value. What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say…

If/when stealing cars becomes easy and without consequence (ie, I can copy yours and have my own), I suspect the auto industry would be in the exact same boat as the record industry is now.

I look forward to that day so we can all have awesome hybrid vehicles that run on garbage. I suspect people will also be able to make awesome mashups so I can get an EV Jeep pickup or a 2012 convertible beetle.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#144

Post by citricsquid »

joelhaus wrote: post #124
citricsquid wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it. > Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value. What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say…

So off base. Where to begin... > And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it. He says the opposite of this. Redthrowaway on free vs. paid content: The formatting was wrong, it was inconvenient, and the metadata was filled with crap from the rippers that meant it would never sort properly. So I bought an ebook from Amazo…

> He says the opposite of this. Redthrowaway on free vs. paid content:

That's a tired and no longer relevant point. His point is that people will pay for the convenience of acquiring media, and then presents an example of when it was convenient to him (purchasing an ebook when the pirated version was sub par quality). However, as I showed in my video example, iTunes (and many other companies) have already addressed this issue, they have solved the convenience part and people still pirate, which shows (to me at least and I would hope everyone else) the issue is NOT acquisition of content or convenience, it's saving money.

Also no I don't think people should be punished more harshly for media piracy, I don't ever want to try and comment on the proper legal approach because I don't understand enough about the law to do it properly, but my basic thoughts on media piracy have been previously outlined here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694764

Piracy happens in most cases because it's FREE, this is the #1 reason, the fact that Spotify etc. are finding success should be the absolute proof: Spotify is free (or cheaper, if you pay for a subscription) than purchasing music, that's why people use it. Convenience is not a valid or relevant reason for (most) media piracy any more. There are some cases (such as acquiring the entire discography of an artist or group, which can't be done easily through any pre-existing product) which makes piracy more convenient, but the common use case of media acquisition (a single song or an artists latest album) is not part of the convenience.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#145

Post by maratd »

citricsquid wrote: post #92
redthrowaway wrote: post #81

The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic economics: Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value . pg was right in pointing out that the content industry is built on the economics of scarcity, and that this scarcity no longer exists. You could charge someone to see a movie in a theatre when doing so was the only way to see the movie. You c…

And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it. > Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value. What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say…

> People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying it.

Please don't conflate tangible goods with intangible goods. Intangible goods are patterns. You can't steal a pattern, because a pattern can't be "owned" in any sense that a physical object can.

Now, you can have rights to a pattern and that right stops others from exploiting that pattern commercially, but you don't own the pattern. Even our current laws recognize this. After all, your right will expire, but if you own a car, you own it forever and without limits.

So enough with this "theft" bullshit.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#146

Post by andylei »

anonymoushn wrote: post #56
Androsynth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, how many iOS apps would there be if Apple wouldn't allow you to charge for them? It would still be an ok ecosystem, but not great like it is now.

Certainly people are certainly attracted to iOS dev because it produces money, but iOS users do not have to pay for apps. It is easy to get apps without paying for them, but Apple has made it very easy to pay for them. I doubt that the absence of copyright would significantly change the proportion of iOS users who use apps without paying for them.

you're totally missing the point. the question is whether the ability to charge money incentivizes programmers to produce code. androsynth argues that the app store shows that it does. there are hundreds if not thousands of apps that would not exist if all apps in the store had to be free.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#147

Post by tissarah »

The question isn't whether music and information are property or not ... the question is whether or not our government is protecting it in a way that makes sense for its citizens.

The examples that PG points to are all examples of massive societal and social change (moving to the moon, changing from hunter gathering, and in a comment he nodded to the abolition of slavery). These were situations where we did have a fundamental shift in what our society believed was property. This simply hasn't happened here. Citizens still believe that an idea is yours, that creative works have value and belong to the person who creates them. We desire to protect that.

Where it has all gone wrong is our laws and the industries. Perhaps the value of this property has decreased and the law still protects the ability of the media giants to price beyond that value. That's not working for citizens. Citizens are being held to licenses and contracts they haven't read and don't understand. They can't trade an ebook from their device to their spouse's. When I switch between android and iphone do I no longer own angry birds? The real problem is that the legislature isn't working for us to protect these property rights in a way that makes sense for us as the citizens who made the property a right in the first place. Could this be keeping the market from adjusting to valid pressures?

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#148

Post by angersock »

davidw wrote: post #127
angersock wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Are you unable to understand the difference between making a statement with unspecified assumptions, and making a crafted argument with carefully specified axioms and clear logical reasoning--while also noting obvious facts about the real-world implementation of the topic you debate? How many songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published? How many love poems are written and not saved? Content is…

> What? Are you retarded? No, and that kind of comment is not welcome here, either. Information goods most certainly are scarce if you look at the effort it takes to make a song, a movie, a complex piece of software. That time and effort is not free. 'Dreamed up' is a lot different from 'sat down and worked hard on it for months'.

(that kind of comment saved HN bandwidth several dozen KB, I wager. But, have it your way.)

Your argument about scarcity is akin to saying "Never mind that we have trees that drop fruit on the ground for everyone into perpetuity--when you consider that we collect some fruit, cart it off to town, polish it, and cart it back, and sell it, of course fruit is a scarce resource!"

If the time/effort would've been expended anyways, yeah, it's effectively free. If the time/effort would've been better spent elsewhere, it shold've been.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#149

Post by newsoundwave »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #95
zasz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP said that there would be less of it, not that it would be nonexistent. Linux is probably an exception, and not the rule, and it is such an exception that large companies are willing to subsidize it. I've been looking for some good sound editing software, and the only solution I could find that was good at altering tempo without creating weird artifacts was closed-source and proprietary. I've also rarely played any…

Apache, Wordpress, nginx, node.js, coffeescript, ruby, rails, python, django, chromium, firefox, webkit, drupal, varnish, memcached, 7zip, postgresql, mongodb, php, clang, wine, dosbox, vlc, virtualbox, truecrypt, calibre, audacity, openoffice, cygwin, flac, ogg, perl, synergy ...

I'm both enjoying and cringing at all of these HNers indicating that Linux is the only major exception they can think of(thus open/free source is obviously a novelty), when many of our livelihoods likely depend on these products.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#150

Post by davidw »

sp332 wrote: post #140
davidw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IBM, RedHat, the US National Security Agency, Canonical, DARPA, Google, etc. all pay for open source code to be written. IBM: sells tons of proprietary software. Redhat: genuine open source deal. Legit example. Government: money comes from taxes. I don't think I fancy a world where information goods are mostly paid for through taxes. Google: makes most of their money from the proprietary bits of their software.

My point isn't that IBM etc. make money from open-source software. My point is that they are all charged money by people writing open-source software.

I don't think they're actually charged much - more that they employ some experts who work on the software.

It's pretty difficult to charge for goods that are not scarce.

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