121–130 of 176 posts
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Same here. A file that can be copied infinite times without cost is not worth much. I put 2 years of work into a book that gets pirated all the time. I have no problem with it at all. I think we would be better off reevaluating business models rather than suffering the effects of trying to preserve out-dated ones.
What mediums do you two sell your books through?
In order to thwart piracy, she refused to allow her latest novel to be released as an audiobook since the format is popular with file-sharers and also denied the publication of Russian and Chinese versions.
Isn't it like taping on the cover of the book: "Only for white"?
I've seen the following argument a thousand times: "Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!" That argument is actually completly irrelevant. I took a train the other night, and there were only 2 people in my whole car. The previous week it was packed. Both times I had to buy a ticket at the same price. If you don't see what that has to do with pirating music (or software, or…
So trains are fundamentally different, because to ride one is to use someone's property against their will, and so you violate a natural right. When you pirate music, you are only breaking laws. Although breaking the law might be considered immoral, it is for a fundamentally different reason. There are definitely more cases where people think it's acceptable to break the law, especially if there net utility to society goes up. Examples of this would be
(1) parking in one of many handicap parking spaces at night when there is negligible chance that they will all be filled
(2) pirating music that you would not buy if you had to pay for it (you sincerely claim!).
I've seen the following argument a thousand times: "Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!" That argument is actually completly irrelevant. I took a train the other night, and there were only 2 people in my whole car. The previous week it was packed. Both times I had to buy a ticket at the same price. If you don't see what that has to do with pirating music (or software, or…
I'm going to guess out loud at it, and hopefully somebody will jump in and help me.
1) In the case of goods or services with minimal marginal costs and large fixed costs in proportion to total costs, you are expected to pay for them.
2) If you don't pay for them you are breaking the law.
Therefore, the argument that if marginal cost is zero on some digital good, then [something number 1] isn't stealing is completely irrelevant to [something number 2].
I'm sure that "something number 1" (referred to as "it") is related to free riding, due to a shared metaphor, and I'm going to assume that it is "a use of that good or service without paying," again due to the metaphor, where a single person took a single train ride without paying.
Does "something number 2" = "whether a use of that good or service is illegal or not"? Because that seems to me to be setting up as a straw man a question that no one is asking, then begging the question with an answer that is identical to your second premise.
This still doesn't change the fact that piracy does hurt authors. The sad fact is that piracy is only getting worse. Even when you can get a song for 99 cents with no DRM or restrictions, music piracy is still rampant. I'm waiting for the next set of excuses. In '99, it was because music was too expensive and the artists were getting screwed (which is a funny excuse, because 1% of something is something, but 1% of 0…
In high school and college, I pirated plenty of music, because I was dead broke. Now that I'm older, and have a job, I'm buying a lot of the music that I downloaded 10 years ago. $1 a song is still too much, but when Amazon has digital albums for $5, I'll buy a few. I've always gone to shows, though, to support the local artists as directly as I can.
too much??! really? $1 is hardly a lot of money for a good song.
I also forgot to mention that we now have the ability to preview almost any song before buying with services like Grooveshark.
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I'm not sure I understand. Can you provide an example?
Any system where support or funding for production does not depend on restricting copying: those should be inspirations for alternatives. Open-source/free software, Wikipedia, the BBC, science/academic research . . . The internet is a communication device, and we should be using to its max. All questions about distinguishing different kinds of copying, and whether one is moral or not, do not reach the real heart of t…
This isn't true freedom. I am not allowed to copy open source software into my commercial application without releasing my revisions.
It's also funny that you mention open source, because it's eventually going to bring down the wages of developers. This is because the difficult parts (IE: the software that needs to be engineered) is given out for free and businesses only need the mechanics to make changes (lower education, skillm and pay requirements).
I think that humans have an inherent problem with seeing piracy as theft unless they are the victims. Theft in a traditional sense is almost always zero-sum, and piracy isn't. We weren't really built to deal with this. The closest thing that I can think of is having someone sleep with your spouse—it's kind of like stealing, but it's not zero-sum. And it's not illegal. It also doesn't help that our intellectual proper…
I disagree, it's the same as any other situation where people act unethically just because there's low risk of getting caught. People steal items from hotel rooms, catch a train without buying a ticket, hack cable TV circuits, use others' unprotected wifi, keep a 20 when they were expecting a 10, insure items after they're damaged, etc etc. My last two flatmates have left without paying their share of the utility bil…
People know this unconsciously. A few million years of evolution have made us want to communicate. People copy because of the natural tendency to do something that is good for all of us.
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There are parallels, but surely there's a large, morally important difference between sneaking onto a half empty train with $50 seats, and stealing $50 from someone's wallet.
Surely it's important to pay attention to what is actually said in discussions. What was being said is that taking a train seat with zero marginal cost to the train owners is parallel to downloading a song which has zero marginal cost to the band or record label. Both are taking something with no marginal cost. The point was that stealing that train seat really is stealing. That means that the argument "there is no m…
krschultz: "Trains have zero marginal cost. We call them stealing. Therefore, zero marginal cost does not prevent something from being called stealing."
InclinedPlane: "Trains are different from music, in that the latter never fills up. Therefore, it is possible for zero marginal cost to be a defense."
You: "InclinedPlane, just imagine a train which doesn't fill up."
Me: "You are right that the half-empty train and piracy are similar. This still doesn't justify calling it stealing."
You: "[Snarky comment]. All I was claiming is that they are similar."
...and I agree. I wasn't saying you were wrong in your initial comment, I was saying that you were right but it doesn't complete krschultz's argument.
No need to get snarky. Not every reply to your comment is an assertion that you're wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I understand. Can you provide an example?
Any system where support or funding for production does not depend on restricting copying: those should be inspirations for alternatives. Open-source/free software, Wikipedia, the BBC, science/academic research . . . The internet is a communication device, and we should be using to its max. All questions about distinguishing different kinds of copying, and whether one is moral or not, do not reach the real heart of t…
The problem is how do you make it possible for the best people making music (or whatever other internet good) to completely sustain themselves via things they put online.
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> ""Breaking the law" is not identical to "stealing."" You are technically correct (according to Futurama, the best kind of correct). But you're also repeating the digital-communist newspeak also. "Piracy is not stealing" is not identical to "Piracy is not wrong". I realize that's not the position you're trying to push, but bear in mind that "Piracy is not stealing" is way too often used to justify piracy itself, as…
They really do have a different moral status though. Copyright and IP are purely pragmatic commercial arrangements. Any wrongness in infringement comes solely from it simply being against the rules of a particular game we have decided to play. If we had different rules, such copying would be harmless. The copyright-based industries have tried to present infringement as a fundamental moral wrong. It is not. Quite the…
You're making his point. You could also the same thing about anything.