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Paul Graham has lost the plot

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Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#231

Post by neutronicus »

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…

Currently, musicians and distributors get paid mostly via rent-seeking activities - they forego advance payment for their labor in exchange for the possibility of rents on the products of it.

This has a few advantages - the utility of music is generally unknown at the time of its production. Popularity, especially, adds utility to a piece of music and is very difficult to predict in advance. In fact, I think popularity dominates the utility that many content consumers derive from music. Sometimes auteurs manage to produce something that defies your expectations and gives you much more utility than you thought it would have.

If you retain the right to seek rents on content you've produced, you're able to charge what's appropriate to the utility that consumers currently derive from your music, rather than what they'd have expected to when you made it (nothing, if they'd never heard of you!). If you can't seek rent on the products of your labor, then you have to get compensated for it directly. Currently, musicians do this mostly via live performance, but I suppose holding content for ransom via some sort of kickstarter-analogue might be a viable way forward.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that there's less money in that sort of thing than rent-seeking, but I'm certainly not an expert. If there's less money in it, then there will be less high-quality content. I've thought about it, and I think I'm okay with that. If the market for recorded music contracts due to digital sharing, I think I'll live, and I'd prefer digital sharing to remain possible.

It's unfortunate for musicians, but I guess I'm just a callous soul.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#232

Post by functionform »

There are ethical and economical reasons for low to zero-cost mp3s.

1. The artist actually gets even more of a shit deal with digital distribution than they did with physical media. You are supporting the machine, not the musician.

2. The cost of developing a quality recording has plummeted dramatically, the only substantive cost remaining is the advertising. The exception might be for faux artists like Rihanna that hire top notch songwriters to pen hits, but for lesser known musicians, mp3 distribution has been shown in studies to have a positive impact.

3. mp3s can function as the advertising medium itself. The money can be made elsewhere like endorsements, or touring. Live music can never be "stolen".

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#233

Post by icebraining »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #189
maratd wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> you own it forever and without limits. The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is. Same as with those patterns of yours -- the laws could easily be changed so that you own the pattern always and forever. It's quite pointless to argue about the shoulds of the situation based on current law. When we're talking about incentives for production and utility, it actually makes quite a bit of sense to conflate…

The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is.

I disagree. I think it's part of the current social code/contract, not just the law. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA ads say exactly that - "you wouldn't steal a car" - because they know people find property (particularly personal property) to be something we have a right to.

Copyright, on the other hand, is only unquestionable by the law.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#234

Post by nirvdrum »

maratd wrote: post #222
nirvdrum wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment in no way actually addresses what he's saying, which is a hypothesis to the justification for why people do things. In fact, he didn't even conflate the terms as I see it, unless you want to say piracy is only related to theft. And the section you quoted doesn't even have the term "theft" in it (which you also quoted). In short, it's a tired talking point of a technicality that adds almost nothing to the…

> I'd love to hear more about how you think people justify copyright infringement. People don't justify anything. By saying that something needs to be justified, you are suggesting that this is a moral issue? It's wrong for me to copy patterns of bytes? If so, then I've been a sinner since I was 10. Remember those 5 1/4 floppies, BBSes, IRC, etc? Yeah. Copyright law was designed with businesses in mind, not individua…

If you build good software that does what it's supposed to, there's no need for service. There may be need for additional software to solve a new problem and in that sense, you provide a service. But I certainly don't want software that I need to keep going back to the vendor for fixes for or new documentation or for training on how to use it. I think that's very much the wrong way to do software, despite your emphatic use of italics.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#235

Post by RickHull »

cynicalkane wrote: post #208
maratd wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No you don't; the car must be titled, road-legal, emissions tested, insured, and you must be licensed to drive. That is not true. All of those things are necessary to use a car, not to own one.

I'm pretty sure you need a license to own a car in most jurisdictions, but that's not the point. (And you definitely need a title to own a car because that's how you own a car. In some jurisdictions merely possessing the physical copy of the title implies ownership of the car, which is why you always keep the title in a safe place.) Actually, you made my point for me. The point is society limits the way people can us…

The title is one way to recognize the rightful owner. If the title is destroyed or missing, those who believe in natural rights would still recognize ownership. Those who believe in state-given rights might not.

Also, you mentioned earlier that mere possession does not imply rightful ownership. I totally agree, as would anyone who has been the victim of theft.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#237

Post by gaius »

angersock wrote: post #118
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…

And they are welcome to keep paying for it--as the rest of us download free copies. As for convenience, I may find it more convenient to download music from TPB or a college FTP than from iTunes, because I don't want to deal with their installer or give away my billing info. Convenience is an utterly subjective measure. (also, your car analogy is shitty and bad and you should feel shitty and bad)

The word for this is "tragedy of the commons". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#238

Post by lutorm »

davidw wrote: post #138
sophacles wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, go to any mid-sized town or bigger, there is at least one recording studio, making decent or good recordings for bands that never hit the "*AA lottery", but make decent money (either in the form of door fees and schwag, some even enough to live on) giving away CDs at shows to keep people coming to the next show. Even more that do the same thing, but keep a day job and do music for the love of it. For every band y…

Every band I've ever gone to see sells CDs at their shows, and they're mostly the kinds of bands you describe. > keep a day job "Producing less of it" because they can't earn enough to do it full time. There would be more people in that boat if, in my thought experiment, they earned absolutely nothing from their content. I don't think we'd actually ever reach that point, but just think about it as a 'what if'.

Producing less of it, yeah, maybe. But people seem to be forgetting that producing content or enriching content creators is not the goal of copyright law. It's supposed to "further the progress of science and the useful arts", and there is clearly a tradeoff between allowing people to copy versus allowing creators to monetize their creations.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#239

Post by el_zorro »

icebraining wrote: post #211
citricsquid wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am absolutely stating that if you asked the "average American" whether or not they would steal cars if there were no consequences (financial, legal or moral) they would absolutely say "Yes, I would have no problems stealing a car". Another way to ask the question is to say "What are the consequences of stealing a car from your neighbour?" and I would say the answers would be "Legal (theft), moral (I have taken…

Oh, I didn't think you were including moral consequences. Then the questions I have are; why is copyright infringement free from moral consequences while car stealing isn't?

I would think that people view car theft as more morally consequential than copyright infringement because of its tangible nature. If someone takes a car, someone else is now missing a car. However, if someone were to illegally download a song, nothing irreplaceable is taken (i.e. the artist isn't deprived of the music they have created).

I would also think that the relative value of the items makes a difference ethically. Assuming a song has a value on the market of $1 and a car has a going price of $10,000, the car is four orders of magnitude more expensive. Imagine if only one person could own a song at a time, and that song was valued the same as a car. I don't think you would see the rates of copyright infringement that you see today. For this same reason, I disagree that if car theft became consequence-free, many people would do it. The moral consequence is derived from the value of the object you are depriving someone of; a car is far more valuable than a song. Additionally, there's the ethical consequence of depriving someone of transportation, while taking a song does not really have any effects on a person's quality of life.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#240

Post by VMG »

beambot wrote: post #224
VMG wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do we need The Pirate Bay?

Distribution, feature set, and lack of DRM? We recently gave up casual TV and movies cold-turkey. Frankly, the studios and networks just couldn't figure out how to target us properly. I'm not going to pay $120 / mo. to get my favorite channels (eg. Science and NatGeo) just because ESPN has Comcast by the balls. Similar arguments for movies. FWIW, I don't use TPB either. But I can imagine the appeal of choice, freedom…

So people are not satisfied with reddit and youtube and want commercial entertainment?
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