Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?' • Hacker News Board

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#271

Post by the8472 » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:39 PM UTC

pdabbadabba wrote: post #256

humanrebar wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human rights exist regardless of whether a particular legal framework honors them. Everyone has the right to speech, including the right to the private transmission of data, the right to assemble to pursue common interests, etc. Those rights have limitations when it comes to harming people, but people aren't being harmed by any particular copy of Duck Dynasty S06E03. The thing being harmed here is a business model. I…

Do business models not pay people's salaries? Is this not an interest worth protecting? I think you're view is in trouble (or at least, extremely radical) if it depends on the premise that no law that protects only financial interests can result in imprisonment. I think this is actually the one (perhaps only) point where copyright infringement is actually analogous to theft. Why do we prohibit shoplifting? Because sh…

grandparent said that he disagreed with people being imprisoned or fined for copyright infringement.

Those are punishments.

Asking the violator to cough up the retail price of the pirated product on the other hand wouldn't be a punishment for criminal acts, it would be solving a civil dispute.

Of course making this work at scale is not something that can be done in courts. And making unilateral claims sufficient to require someone to pay up is a bad idea too.

That's why some propose a general copyright levy, or a "culture tax" that gets redistributed to producers.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#272

Post by jimktrains2 » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:39 PM UTC

kristiandupont wrote: post #160

ultramancool wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them. Why do people confuse the concept of free speech with some specific political or legal idea? There are many other ways in which a reduction of free speech is extremely harmful. Look at the great firewall of China blocking democratic content, look at reviews being c…

Using Chinese censorship to argue about pirated content is, imo, a variation of the slippery slope fallacy. If someone obtained your family's credit card numbers and PINs, you would consider them to be in their good right to distribute them freely? They're just numbers, after all.

There would be nothing I could do to prevent them from distributing them. All I can do is make the numbers useless.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#273

Post by cturner » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:40 PM UTC

cturner wrote: post #45

tormeh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait wait. You're telling me Sunde is comparable to Snowden and Manning? Wat.

There is a watertight rights basis for opposing copyright. Copyright is a major structural threat to our freedoms. Our governments are founded generally on rights, which extend from a general principle of live-and-let-live. Copyright is an anti-right. Each time it comes into effect, it removes rights away from everyone except the copyright holder. You might say - that's just words. But it's not. Both in software and…

I checked wikipedia on what is a positive and negative rights. There's a major error through what I've written above here (At best, I've got negative/positive backwards). Treat as suspect. Will brush up some more and come back better prepared for next time.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#274

Post by nogridbag » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #207

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #156

I'm sorry, but downloading entertainment is not a human right. He didn't exactly feed starving people by breaking the law. He put up a torrent aggregator to, mostly, Hollywood movies and shoved aggressive and high-revenue porn and malware ads into every nook and cranny of that site. HN and those passionate about internet freedoms deserve better heroes than guys like Sunde, Dotcom, and Ulbricht. These guys very much e…

> I'm sorry, but downloading entertain is not a human right. Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right. Maybe certain entertainment business models aren't sustainable in the internet age. It's not like we'll run out of entertainment. Most cat-based YouTube videos are better than the Real Housewives of Schenectady anyway. And to extort and imprison people for the sake of a business model is terribl…

What makes entertainment so special? How is a hollywood movie different from any other product, like your laptop, smartphone, or even your web-app you charge money for?

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#275

Post by the8472 » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

Donzo wrote: post #270

the8472 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that harm is only financial. It's a harm relative to potential profits they could have made if other people's rights to make copies were restricted in the first place. If you do not assume such a right then no harm is done.

You trivialize our economic system when you describe it as "only financial." People die over money. I don't want to defend the actions of the copy-write robber-barons. I do not know what the appropriate response for infringement should be. I ignore violations of my own content. Yet I believe that I have a right to the content that I produce. And I respect the rights of others' content. Do you believe that content pro…

You missed half of my point. It's not only "just financial". It's also "just financial harm only if we are pre-supposing the the rights whose natural existence you're trying to prove in the first place"

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#276

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #229

pdabbadabba wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right. No, but at least in the U.S., and most of the rest of the world, it is a legal right. Does that count for nothing just because we're on the internet?

Making money from media is NOT a legal right. You don't have a right to profit. You have the right to attempt to profit from it and exclude others from doing the same with your work. That's all copyright provides. A limited right to an opportunity to make money, granted to you by society so you can make more of that work if society (by proxy of "The Market") deems your works as successful. This right is granted to yo…

[deleted]

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#277

Post by scrollaway » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:44 PM UTC

patzerhacker wrote: post #223

scrollaway wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure talk a lot about how he was putting malware into people's computer through ads, when he himself said he's glad TPB is gone mostly because of how horrible its ads were[1]. You have a point (to the extent that it can be a point - it's just not really worth talking about anymore): downloading entertainment is not a human right. You make a very poor case of arguing that point. But I don't think anyone really arg…

> You are a fool if you're angry about piracy on your pet project. I'll tell my employees that as our company folds from lack of revenue. I'll tell my wife that as we apply for food stamps. I'll tell the that to the next person interviewing me for a job because people didn't want to pay for the value I provided.

Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price...

This is about movies and music at large. Software piracy is a solved problem. In games, the majority of people now use Steam and nobody really cares about the few that look for it on random torrent websites or some such because: 1. They are a much more likely source of malware (you don't just play files, you run executables). 2. Games that care have adopted an online-only DRM model (which has its own problems but that's a story for another thread) 3. A lot of games have an audience comprised entirely of non-paying customers (children without credit cards). Parents are not expected to pirate, and if kids do then no harm done.

In office software, Photoshop and MS Office are the two big names in piracy and both MS and Adobe silently encourage piracy on their products to enforce lock in. And while that sounds scummy when I put it like that, it is an excellent demonstration of what I was mentioning earlier: You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets.

So please, give me a break, your company did not go under because of piracy. And Hollywood/the RIAA have more digits in their bank accounts than total employees.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#278

Post by rayiner » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:46 PM UTC

nogridbag wrote: post #274

humanrebar wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry, but downloading entertain is not a human right. Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right. Maybe certain entertainment business models aren't sustainable in the internet age. It's not like we'll run out of entertainment. Most cat-based YouTube videos are better than the Real Housewives of Schenectady anyway. And to extort and imprison people for the sake of a business model is terribl…

What makes entertainment so special? How is a hollywood movie different from any other product, like your laptop, smartphone, or even your web-app you charge money for?

> even your web-app you charge money for?

Great example! With AWS the incremental cost of supporting each additional user approaches $0. So it's okay for people to use your $10/month web app, paying you the $0.05 or whatever covers their AWS costs? After all, as long as your hosting costs are covered, you're not any worse off, you've just lost the opportunity to make a sale.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#279

Post by scrollaway » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:47 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #260

newaccountfool wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your implying that every download is a lost sale, it doesn't work like that.

I agree that some people wouldn't watch the show if they couldn't download it, but why do they have that right to get it for free? I understand that torrent technology is great, but TPB founder is using downloading TV shows as an example of how things will change.

As I said in a comment below, you too have it backwards. It's not about the "right of the people to download shit for free". It's about the right of the corporations to go to hell and beyond to justify a few bucks; putting people in jail and corrupting the judicial and political system in the process... for what is essentially a harmless offence.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#280

Post by 0x5f3759df-i » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:47 PM UTC

terrence_giggy wrote: post #170

the8472 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

529C39CC24553DFE030119BD35E19884F34A65E0 Free speech or theft?

Context matters. I can yell FIRE in my own home, but I can't go into a crowded theatre and yell it. The hash as you post it here is meaningless. But elsewhere it could be the key to another's property.

So piracy is fine if done in my own home?