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?'

#291

Post by giarc » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:04 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #204

giarc wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It tilted people's brains into knowing that tomorrow, their favorite TV show must be downloaded somewhere else. Not sure how I feel about this. Regardless of how things have played out, I don't think people should expect free TV shows especially in the day and age of PVR/DVR/TIVO etc. I still think creators should be credited/paid for their work. EDIT - To expand, I think you can disagree with the cable companies an…

They should be paid for their work. They (their bosses at least) shouldn't have the power to cripple technology, limit the free flow of information, or throw people in jail to get paid. Again, we're talking about entertainment. The people working on these works are doing really cool things, but they don't have a right to get paid to do cool things. On the other hand, people should have the right to copy arbitrary bit…

I agree that torrent technology should be allowed. The Pirate Bay allowed for that and likely should be able to exist, however let's call a spade a spade. Many of the material on torrent sites is copyrighted material, the founder in his piece says people can't download their TV show tomorrow, acknowledging the fact that copyrighted material drives the site.

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

#292

Post by rev_bird » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #244

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TPB wasn't about rights or freedoms or standing up to government oppression. People used it primarily to obtain media and software without paying for it. // I think there is an issue of rights and freedoms. With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. In other state structures those making the cultural artefacts that we use to express our selves, to link, to coales…

> Moreover, copyright was initially set up with a view to ensuring that eventually the wealth locked up in shared experience, cultural introspection, confrontation with new ideas and different aspects of the culture would be freed in to the public domain. That's not the only theory of copyright. In Europe, copyright has traditionally been viewed in terms of the moral rights of creators to control their work. In many…

So it becomes a question of whom copyright is supposed to protect – I like what the U.S. system _used_ to be, in that it was protective enough to allow creators to reap the economic benefits of their work, but was liberal enough that there was less nonsense about "estates" controlling intellectual assets for decades after the creator's death.

I think there should be a clearly delineated point that a work is given to the public, but I can see how that might sound like a radical notion, especially to people who want to make money off of it.

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

#293

Post by jkaunisv1 » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #198

jkaunisv1 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that your friend can't just click a button and send you a copy of their Ford. Your analogy makes no sense, Fords aren't made of bits.

Exactly. I was trying to show that analogies between digital content and physical things don't make sense.

Ah..that wasn't clear. My bad.

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

#294

Post by wvenable » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:06 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #248

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TPB wasn't about rights or freedoms or standing up to government oppression. People used it primarily to obtain media and software without paying for it. // I think there is an issue of rights and freedoms. With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. In other state structures those making the cultural artefacts that we use to express our selves, to link, to coales…

I'm not sure I agree with much of anything you said. >With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. [...] The democratisation of media particularly through availability of music and film - which are so central to our cultural experience There is always going to be a culture. And there are always going to be things off-limits to the non-wealthy that would totally be pa…

> To the best of my understanding society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even 5000 years ago.

The current availability of books published last century is actually smaller than the current availability of books published before that. So there is actually a bit of a cultural hole from the 1900's because of materials are still in copyright and not published by their owners. Often it isn't even known who is the current owner of a material. There might come a time where people know more about culture 500 years ago than 100 years ago.

> I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people.

I think we've lived with the concept of copyright and patents for so long that we've forgotten what an artificial construct that it is. We're basically giving exclusively ownership to ideas. There is a good argument for doing that, which is why copyright exists, but it's not a universal truth. Locking way and preventing the sharing, modification, and remixing of ideas has a deep cultural cost now and future generations.

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

#295

Post by afro88 » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #74

afro88 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a dangerous line of thinking. Just because people in the US have legal access to content doesn't mean you're allowed to steal it. You make the assumption that you're entitled to something if it's commercially available to people in other parts of the world. You're not. Movies and TV Shows aren't basic necessities that you're entitled to. They are luxuries that you can have if companies decide to sell them to y…

No matter what you think about it, copyright infringement isn't theft.

Care to elaborate? As a musician I struggle to wrap my head around how people think this is the case.

I record a piece of music, I own it. I say if you want to own a copy for personal consumption, it costs $5. End of the argument.

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

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Post by rev_bird » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

mathetic wrote: post #250

mbillie1 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sunde was willing to take risks for what he believed in. He deserves a lot of respect for that no matter what people think about the morality of what he helped to create I find this argument completely fallacious. Does it change the value of a thing if someone takes a risk for it? Ought we respect the causes of suicide bombers, since they gave their lives for them?

Yes, it does. I will never advocate violence but if you look at the reasons that lead to that horrific moment in the suicide bomber's life, then you might see something even more terrifying than the act itself. Sure, you can blame it on bigotry or ignorance, but it turns out suicide bombers on average are more intelligent and well-educated than those in their society [0]. Camus attempts to explain this in his essay T…

> He didn't hurt anyone except himself.

I'm not sure which side of this I'm on, to be honest, but I haven't seen any evidence that there isn't _any_ economic damage done by illegal downloading.

> Sunde went to prison on his own for what he believed was right

This may be true, but it's not like this wasn't a winning venture for him. At a certain point, it could have just been a question of whether he was willing to gamble that he'd gain millions of dollars rather than get locked up.

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

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Post by tzakrajs » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

karmacondon wrote: post #43

Many don't agree with the principles of TPB, but Sunde was willing to take risks for what he believed in. He deserves a lot of respect for that no matter what people think about the morality of what he helped to create. Most people go their whole lives without caring strongly about any issue at all, and almost all of those that do care are willing to sacrifice exactly nothing. I'd like to think that I would be willin…

> He deserves a lot of respect for that no matter what people think about the morality of what he helped to create.

One could respect a lot of bad people with this poor reasoning. Is respect the word you mean? Or do you mean awe?

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

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Post by the8472 » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:11 PM UTC

Donzo wrote: post #290

the8472 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I do not argue that the rights are natural. They are a legal and economic construct. There is nothing natural about them. But that does not mean that these rights do not exist. The question I ask you is, to whom should these rights belong? The entity that has labored to produce the content? Or the entity that has obtained a copy of that content?

I'm not sure if we're even talking about the same thing then.

In a previous post you said

>"As a content creator, shouldn't I have the opportunity to give away my products (or sell them) in a way that I see fit?"

Which seemed to me like an argument for an intrinsic, natural right that a content creator should have, irrespective of current law.

So either we are arguing over current law, in which case the questions you ask are already settled by courts and we should be discussing whether current law is acceptable.

Or you are arguing about rights that people ought to have, but then you cannot say

>"But that does not mean that these rights do not exist."

If we are arguing about rights that one ought to have then they do no exist a priori, they have to be constructed first.

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

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Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #248

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TPB wasn't about rights or freedoms or standing up to government oppression. People used it primarily to obtain media and software without paying for it. // I think there is an issue of rights and freedoms. With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. In other state structures those making the cultural artefacts that we use to express our selves, to link, to coales…

I'm not sure I agree with much of anything you said. >With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. [...] The democratisation of media particularly through availability of music and film - which are so central to our cultural experience There is always going to be a culture. And there are always going to be things off-limits to the non-wealthy that would totally be pa…

>society had a culture 5, 50, 500, and even 5000 years ago //

Society like now used story and music as central elements of cultural expression. 500 and 5000 years ago that was freely shared. 500 years ago in my country (UK) there were poets and playwrights making a living without copyright (though minstrels had closed guilds at at least one point). If you heard a song then you were free to sing it to your friends, make performances of it or whatever.

On the DRM point, the works that are "protected" can't freely enter the public domain. The copyright deal is that the people will - via the government - grant you a monopoly on reproduction/modification (and associated actions) on your work for a limited period in exchange for the work entering the public domain. In order to enter the public domain a work should be free to be enjoyed by all without let or hindrance (beyond that inherent in the format). The point of the DRM is to ensure that the work is never able to be freely used/copied etc., it can't enter the public domain unless it is side-loaded in some way and I can't see any current media corp paying for archiving of all works DRM free and then releasing them at the appropriate time to ensure they keep their end of the bargain. Such a guarantee would be necessary, eg lodging copies with a sort of escrow, for DRM-ed works to be able to provably uphold their end.

>I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people. //

I'm not being as terse at it may seem, but, food? Do you have a right to be fed? If you're not a food producer and don't have the means to produce food, do you still have a right to be fed?

Some will say that one dies without food. I'd argue our form of humanity dies without shared culture - you may find that a good thing?

I'd be interested to know your status, are you wealthy, do you enjoy the arts. I'm poor and work in art & craft primarily.

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

#300

Post by Retra » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:15 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #248

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TPB wasn't about rights or freedoms or standing up to government oppression. People used it primarily to obtain media and software without paying for it. // I think there is an issue of rights and freedoms. With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. In other state structures those making the cultural artefacts that we use to express our selves, to link, to coales…

I'm not sure I agree with much of anything you said. >With a capitalist economy certain elements of culture are effectively reserved for the wealthy. [...] The democratisation of media particularly through availability of music and film - which are so central to our cultural experience There is always going to be a culture. And there are always going to be things off-limits to the non-wealthy that would totally be pa…

>I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people.

You do have such a right, because it is intimately related to the fact that you are human -- a social creature who essentially _requires_ things created by other people for your very survival.

You may not agree that you should have immediate or non-negotiable access, but the mere fact that you are a producer of content and information yourself means that you are in fact paying for that culture.

Just look at how valuable 'being popular' is. It is extremely valuable, and all that value is produced a group of people who are labeled as "consumers", even though they obviously contribute. They "produce" essentially all the value of popularity.