Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It's not a crime if we do it with an app

pluralistic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 640 posts

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#11

Post by ta1243 »

tripplyons wrote: post #3
andrewfromx wrote: post #2

but would Airbnb or Uber exist if they tried to get permission first? Netflix streaming was illegal at first. Youtube for sure. Napster. Tesla (no dealerships it was direct sales to consumers.) Even craigslist or ebay or the very first Ford Model T. They break rules because that's the only way to test the waters and see if the public wants the rule broken?

What was illegal about Neflix, YouTube, and Tesla at first?

Youtube came to fame because of sharing copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holders. Still does.

With Tesla, I've no idea if there are laws preventing direct to customer selling, the "land of the free" has a lot of laws preventing freedom.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#12

Post by wongarsu »

andrewfromx wrote: post #2

but would Airbnb or Uber exist if they tried to get permission first? Netflix streaming was illegal at first. Youtube for sure. Napster. Tesla (no dealerships it was direct sales to consumers.) Even craigslist or ebay or the very first Ford Model T. They break rules because that's the only way to test the waters and see if the public wants the rule broken?

What rules did Craigslist, eBay or the Ford Model T break?

Craigslist seems like a straightforward digital version of what newspapers and community boards were doing for a long time. eBay is just a digital version of an auction house. And the Model T was just a cheaper more widely available car compared to the cars that came before.

None of them seem comparable to AirBnB (subverting hotel regulations by pretending to be something else) or Uber (subverting taxi regulations by pretending to be something else)

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#13

Post by diggan »

fredsted wrote: post #9

If it's a crime, it's obviously still also a crime if it's an app, just look at Ross Ulbricht or SBF. Is it really fair to compare "PotatoTrac" with Uber and AirBnB?

> Is it really fair to compare "PotatoTrac" with Uber and AirBnB?

If they both break laws but seemingly get away with it, so they have that in common, why not compare them? What makes PotatoTrac or any of the other incomparable?

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#15

Post by golemotron »

mrs6969 wrote: post #7
andrewfromx wrote: post #2

but would Airbnb or Uber exist if they tried to get permission first? Netflix streaming was illegal at first. Youtube for sure. Napster. Tesla (no dealerships it was direct sales to consumers.) Even craigslist or ebay or the very first Ford Model T. They break rules because that's the only way to test the waters and see if the public wants the rule broken?

Maybe they should not exist at the first place. So I cant use my car to carry out people, without a permission. However, if I do it with uber, I suddenly can! More than this, I wonder if I can create a company to do taxi bussiness. I will buy 5 car, then rent out 5 more, do taxi bussiness… what makes uber so special, I wonder

Uber is not a great case for your argument. They made the world safer and enabled transportation for people who would otherwise not have it. No one, literally no one, who has spent any time in taxis wants to go back to them. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to call several companies to get a taxi to the airport have none arrive. Uber broke the ice and showed what was possible. There was literally no other way to get past the regulatory capture. Yes, they broke the law, but they are net positive by a large margin.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#16

Post by djoldman »

It appears that the crux of the article is that a lot of price fixing is going on through the use of programs that suggest or encourage pricing among a few players, to the advantage of all the players and the disadvantage of the customer.

Crackdowns do take time in the US but there is hope. See e.g.:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realp...

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#17

Post by ryandrake »

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything, it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to jail, fines get whittled down to nothing in appeal after appeal, and the government usually finally just accepts a pinky-swear to never be bad again.

Contrast that to how individuals get the hammer put down on them by the justice system if they so much as fart in the wrong room. The lesson from the last 50 years should be: If you want to commit a crime and get away with it, do it as a corporation.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#18

Post by fny »

Don’t react to the Airbnb and Uber: read the article to the end. The core argument is tech empowers oligopolies which in turn drives inflation.

There are other damning facts too:

> private equity companies have rolled up all the fire truck companies, hiking the price of trucks, creating backlogs and bottlenecks for parts and service, and starving the nation's municipalities (including Los Angeles)

Capitalism is dead. Long live capitalism.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#19

Post by closewith »

diggan wrote: post #10
chippiewill wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube had a lot of illegal content early on and didn't make much effort to respect rightsholders etc. for a while until the service had taken off.

Right, but that was more an unintended consequence of hosting user uploaded material. They still did delete stuff when companies (or their lawyers) wrote in to them requesting a take down. Compare that to Airbnb or Uber whose business model was "Ignore the law" in the very beginning, which is why they got banned in a bunch of places. YouTube's business model was never "Ignore the law" nor was it banned on as a wide s…

A growth strategy, not an unintended consequence. Early YouTube without copyright infringement would have died in obscurity.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#20

Post by Cheer2171 »

andrewfromx wrote: post #2

but would Airbnb or Uber exist if they tried to get permission first? Netflix streaming was illegal at first. Youtube for sure. Napster. Tesla (no dealerships it was direct sales to consumers.) Even craigslist or ebay or the very first Ford Model T. They break rules because that's the only way to test the waters and see if the public wants the rule broken?

This is revisionist history: Netflix was legal. Craigslist was legal. eBay was legal, Youtube was legal (yes people uploaded copyrighted content, but they complied with DMCA takedowns as required to under the law)
Post reply on HN