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Paul Graham has lost the plot

mishandrob.com

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Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#191

Post by chc »

citricsquid wrote: post #144
joelhaus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Maybe iTunes "addressed the issue," but not in a satisfactory way. iTunes is not remotely convenient for me. I can't watch an iTunes movie on my TV without either a) Buying a useless gadget from Apple, or b) Removing the DRM. Also, things are generally available for piracy way earlier (we're talking months in some cases) than they are on iTunes. That is a huge, massive inconvenience.

As for prices, yes, iTunes is also much too expensive for many things — when I can buy a physical copy and have it shipped crosscountry to my house for a fraction of the cost of iTunes' lousy crippleware, something is wrong — but that seems beside the point. Yes, a lot of piracy happens because it's free. Most of that piracy doesn't really seem to be replacing sales and so isn't really relevant from an economic standpoint. Those people just want something for free. It seems like the point where piracy really becomes a problem is when it's the superior option even for people who could easily afford to buy your wares.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#192

Post by andylei »

anonymoushn wrote: post #160
andylei wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The OP strongly implies that "The presence of copyright" is the same as "The ability to charge money," and much of the discussion here also assumes that. It is simply not true, though. I would rather discuss what the OP is actually about than the thing that the OP would prefer to substitute for its subject matter to make its case seem better than it is.

my point is still the same. the question is not how people consume apps, its how many of those apps are produced.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#193

Post by tzm »

The mechanism for vending the rights and distribution to sound waves has changed. If all you need is a sound recorder to capture the IP of a work of art, then the governing environment must change.

Smells are similar, but are not yet distributed as a temporal frequency.

Software is much easier to control, since after all, logic is embedded in the work of art, an OS can govern the rights and/or TCP requests can act as a conduit for authentication.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#194

Post by VMG »

angersock wrote: post #76
VMG wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that nobody stops you from making "Open-Source" films and music, and many people do. The masses however seem to prefer commercial films, music and software.

Er, the number of views we get on places like Youtube and 4chan and YTMND seem to present a convincing counterargument.

Then why do we need The Pirate Bay?

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#195

Post by gcp »

kenmazy wrote: post #154
zasz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you prove that those projects wouldn't be healthier if people were happy to pay money for them?

Can you prove they would be? How many closed-source, for profit software projects were rescued after the supporting company went under? (I am intentionally conflating closed-source and for profit as the majority of financed projects are closed source). What you have to consider here is the rate of progress, as well as the length of development time. Open source projects have essentially infinite development time, whe…

very rarely, closed-source projects are released as open source (e.g. Doom 3), but I think we can all agree that that is the exception to the norm

Well, if we compare to the list in the parent, it's much more. At least Firefox, Blender, Rails qualify. These were products that had no future in closed-source form. If they had, it would have been financial madness to open source them.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#196

Post by takinola »

If we stop thinking of this as a moral issue (stealing music is bad) and more as a business issue (how can I make money making music?) the issue becomes clearer. In my opinion, the laws of copyright were designed to facilitate commerce and are not 'self-evident' in the way human rights are.

If I was in the music industry, my line of reasoning would be thus

1. Can I prevent people from downloading my stuff illegally? (My guess is this very unlikely regardless of lawsuits, drm, etc)

2. Given that some people WILL obtain my goods without having paid for it, how can I still make money from the cheap bastards? (My guess is this will probably involve using assets that I can exert monopoly control to access e.g. live interactions, licensing, early access to stuff, etc)

3. How can I ensure the folks who would still pay for my goods are not tempted to defect and join the pirates? Here's where you make sure your distribution strategy is much better than the pirate experience (It probably wouldn't hurt to help to make the pirate experience suck a little bit by seeding torrents with crappy versions of your goods and hampering companies who want to improve the pirate experience).

I would probably focus more on the 2nd step simply because the 1st and 3rd are just band-aids and can only take you so far. This point of view probably pisses some people off but like everything else, it's not personal, just business

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#197

Post by InclinedPlane »

haberman wrote: post #187
InclinedPlane wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

Video games alone are a 16 billion dollar per year industry. It employs over 22,000 software developers. ( http://www.theesa.com/games-improving-what-matters/economy.a... ) Are you seriously suggesting that this industry would produce just as much software if their work wasn't copyrighted, or that listing 35 open-source projects says anything about what would happen to the industry overall? You're focusing on one ver…

It's funny you trot out that example just as so many games are switching to "free to play" models.

I'm focusing on a "very small part of the software industry" which creates the software which runs the vast majority of web servers. Oh, and every android phone too.

All I'm saying is that if you can't accept that there is "another way" of making stuff, even hugely important stuff, then you simply have not been paying attention.

The argument that failing to charge for every single copy of software/music/books/movies must necessarily translate to a diminution of those works has been made time and time again, but there are so many counter examples today that it's patently ridiculous to make it yet again.

Do you have a better argument to make or are you going to stick with this one?

Because honestly I would imagine that reusing the same old tired FUD that companies like MS have tried to use to scare people away from using Linux or Apache back in the mid-90s would have a limited shelf-life.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#198

Post by JDulin »

VMG wrote: post #55
JDulin wrote: post #32

At first I wasn't sure if "Defining Property" was one of the most insightful essays I read in a long time, or lazy logic on Paul's part trying to protect the internet in the copyright debate. But I'm pretty sure Paul is talking about something important now. What he hits on is that there is no scarcity anymore. Media is reproduced and shared freely and instantly, because that is the nature of the internet. The 'pipes…

There was little scarcity before. The production costs of CDs and LPs were much lower than what they were priced in the shops.

But it looked like there was scarcity to the consumer. When you are the one means of distribution, you can create as much scarcity as you want. It just seems that the record labels and movie industry have carried out that ruse for so long, they actually believe it.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#200

Post by pwf »

citricsquid wrote: post #144
joelhaus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> iTunes (and many other companies) have already addressed this issue, they have solved the convenience part and people still pirate

iTunes still isn't the most convenient source for many things. My one experience with iTunes was trying to buy an album from a French musician. I spent several hours creating a fake French account with a legitimate French address and tracking down a French iTunes gift card. I had to give up, because the artist didn't take the time to manually check all 300 locales to include his album in.

You consider that 'solved'? The artist never got the money I was actively trying to give him.

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