Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions • Hacker News Board

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#101

Post by d0mine » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:00 AM UTC

sha90 wrote: post #90

rdtsc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD, wait and rent it, or watch it at a friends house. So how do you answer that question. I would argue that many a Joe blow would have payed exactly $0. I used to see a lot of free movies because my friend worked for the local movie theater. And there were a good number o f movies after which I wante…

> So assuming that pirate copy = a lost sale is a ridiculous argument. This seems like a ridiculous counter-argument to me. You are basically trying to say that because a pirated copy is not exactly equal to one lost sale, then it's not an issue at all... forgetting the fact that the ratio doesn't need to be 1:1 for money to be lost. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "100 pirate copies = a lost sale", on a…

If you consider piracy as a form of marketing then you see that "100 pirate copies == a sale that would not have happened otherwise"

So it is not clear (at least it is not ridiculously clear) whether money are lost because of piracy.

There is no moral obligation to support business practices based on obsolete technology.

Copyright infringement is not stealing.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#102

Post by MiWHackerNews » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:08 AM UTC

this violates us laws and international treaties on currency controls. It's conspiracy to commit counterfeitng and inciting others to commit wire fraud

Remember they used to hang people over this. Newton watched with glee as coin shavers he had caught were executed.

Mmmm move on. Not quite right.

See EUrion

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#103

Post by jonah » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:17 AM UTC

AshleysBrain wrote: post #38

Don't a lot of copiers/scanners have technology that prevents them copying currency? Thought there was a special dot pattern or something.

Yes. [1]

As do image editing softwares. [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation [2] http://www.petapixel.com/2011/08/09/heres-what-happens-when-...

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#104

Post by drostie » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:19 AM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #100

JackC wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular trained lawyer wishes that we could never talk about whether copyright infringement is stealing, ever again. It's 100% legally irrelevant. There are laws against stealing physical property. Copyright infringement doesn't violate them. There are laws against copyright infringement. Copyright infringement does violate them. The question of whether "stealing" is good shorthand for "copyright infringement…

Problem of course is that this is fundamentally not a legal discussion but a philosophical one. It doesn't really matter wether it's 100% legally irrelevant. It's 100% philosophically relevant.

No. Copyright is always fundamentally a legal discussion. Everyday copying doesn't have deep ethical ramifications, because the most everyday copying we do is called 'memory' and remembering something is almost never unethical. And ethics is the only branch of philosophy which really has a voice in the matter -- copyright is not epistemic or ontological, etc. I would go so far as to say that the utter absence of a moral intuition against copying is why the vast majority of people do it and don't have a problem with it.

The people who do seem to be responding to some sort of intuition of this form: "a free lunch is unfair." It's not, as we'd say, unfair to you, and not even to the copyright holders necessarily, but something about a free lunch just looks suspicious. So the first comment in this thread says that whether Joe Blow's actions are unfair "comes down to how much Joe Blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4." You saw that he would have paid for X but instead he got it for free, and you said "man, there's something unfair here."

It may sometimes be useful to regulate things which our ethical intuitions don't speak very strongly about. Our ethical intuitions don't speak very strongly about living in a messy room; a boarding school might nonetheless demand that its students keep their rooms clean. (I have heard a cute theory that we lack this intuition because our primate ancestors lived in trees and therefore literally did not have to handle their own crap.) Seatbelt laws, licensing drivers, and regulating CO2 emissions would also fit into the same category. So "who has the right to copy this book?" can still be a valid question, even when that book is a .pdf and our relevant moral intuitions instead say, "hey, I'm just giving the book I bought to a friend -- that's within my rights as a person who bought the book." That moral intuition, even if you have it, doesn't necessarily obviate the potential social value of that law.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#105

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:24 AM UTC

sha90 wrote: post #90

rdtsc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD, wait and rent it, or watch it at a friends house. So how do you answer that question. I would argue that many a Joe blow would have payed exactly $0. I used to see a lot of free movies because my friend worked for the local movie theater. And there were a good number o f movies after which I wante…

> So assuming that pirate copy = a lost sale is a ridiculous argument. This seems like a ridiculous counter-argument to me. You are basically trying to say that because a pirated copy is not exactly equal to one lost sale, then it's not an issue at all... forgetting the fact that the ratio doesn't need to be 1:1 for money to be lost. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "100 pirate copies = a lost sale", on a…

Let me inject my own anecdotal evidence for a second: before the internet, I remember renting a lot more movies than I do now. The internet has cut down on the amount of money I give to these organizations, fact.

But you didn't say whether you're now downloading infringing copies of those movies, or the Internet just showed you how obsolete the concept of physically driving to a store to obtain a physical object containing digital media is when the technology exists to convey that digital media at virtually no cost. Maybe you stopped renting movies because you have better things to do with your time than wait in your car, search the shelves, wait in line, and wait in your car again.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#106

Post by halfasleep » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:25 AM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #69

kaybe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and you will need a copy machine that actually copies bills. Some machines use software to block it. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation )

wow...a xerox machine that has a built-in database of images to "do not reprint", WOW!!!

It's not so much a database as a pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#107

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:29 AM UTC

drostie wrote: post #104

ThomPete wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem of course is that this is fundamentally not a legal discussion but a philosophical one. It doesn't really matter wether it's 100% legally irrelevant. It's 100% philosophically relevant.

No. Copyright is always fundamentally a legal discussion. Everyday copying doesn't have deep ethical ramifications, because the most everyday copying we do is called 'memory' and remembering something is almost never unethical. And ethics is the only branch of philosophy which really has a voice in the matter -- copyright is not epistemic or ontological, etc. I would go so far as to say that the utter absence of a mo…

Copyright is but the idea of copyright isn't.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#108

Post by scelerat » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 8:51 AM UTC

memset wrote: post #58

This is just awful. "They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies of physical property to be just as valuable as the original." What is an "original"? With food I understand. smell:food::sound:coins. Or even smell:food::picture:money. So in this case, picture:money::torrent:?? What is the 'original'? The physical medium containing the footage original? A live performance? If you were to pay for the mo…

Maybe the shift is that you don't make such expensive movies. Or create an experience that is impossible to reproduce via digital distribution.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#109

Post by drostie » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 9:01 AM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #107

drostie wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Copyright is always fundamentally a legal discussion. Everyday copying doesn't have deep ethical ramifications, because the most everyday copying we do is called 'memory' and remembering something is almost never unethical. And ethics is the only branch of philosophy which really has a voice in the matter -- copyright is not epistemic or ontological, etc. I would go so far as to say that the utter absence of a mo…

Copyright is but the idea of copyright isn't.

There is no idea of copyright distinct from copyright. o_O.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#110

Post by corin_ » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 9:18 AM UTC

Shum wrote: post #93

cgray4 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually an idea that I've been kicking around for a couple of weeks. My idea is slightly more complicated, but this is the gist. I would call it a digital media consumer's union, where a person pays in a certain amount per month and then the total is allocated to the copyright holders proportionally to the amount that their media are consumed by the members of the union. Consumption statistics for music are…

Flattr is great and they actually do have something along the lines of tracking down people who aren't part of the system. You can flattr Twitter accounts and they will create a 'pending click' for that account which will only be processed if the person tries to collect the money. The main problem I can see with your system is the difficulty in finding the appropriate person or organization to pay for every single fi…

If it actually took off, the person(s) running it could take the sort of fee that shops/etc would normally take (probably much less) to cover time, and then "Dear Record Label, I have a cheque for $$$$$ broken down for the following artists: do you want it?"

I think the biggest problem would be convincing people to do it - right now you can get it free (or a slight fee from some download services) illegally or paid legally... how many people are going to chose the brand new third option of paid yet still illegal?

edit:

Perhaps a more viable idea would be to do the same thing, but rather than having the aim as trying to win over the likes of the RIAA/etc. just try and win over artists. The Louis CK is now pretty well known, but he had to make that decision before finding out its success. What if anybody who downloaded anything could go through a service that would give money to the artists, without legally admitting to any wrongdoing?

For example, I download a Justin Bieber album, or a Ricky Gervais stand-up DVD, go onto this site and say "here's £5 because I think the DVD/album/whatever is cool", and that money then goes directly to the artist - without me ever having to say that I actually downloaded it illegally, that's just left as an assumed fact.

Of course this becomes harder on the administration side, and much harder when it's something like a big film where you pretty much have to go through the studio or you'd never be able to split money between everyone involved. And, thinking about it, I guess even for individual singers/standups/etc, there's still the issue that not everybody who makes money from a CD without being the artist falls into the moneygrabbing category. Do sound mixers, studio techs, etc etc etc etc not deserve a cut?

Anyway, just babbling on... would love to see someone give this a real shot, but really no idea if it could have even the tiniest chance of success.