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

#131

Post by paulsutter » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 6:33 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #44

maeon3 wrote: post #10

Very creative and thought provoking, but wrong. A DVD version of avatar sells for say $20 and Riaa gets some percentage of that. Joe blow downloads avatar for free from google or some other website, ptp or sneakernet. Joe blow sends the riaa some percentage of $20 in photocopied money. That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow. Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for…

Agreed. Imho this argument that copying is not stealing does a real disservice to the cause. No, you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers, be it entertainment, knowledge or whatever, that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft. This is so transparent and obvious a flaw in the assertion that no trained la…

So we should be able to copy mobile apps for free too? What about piracy of luxury goods, that's ok too right because hey they're just copying?

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

#132

Post by gaulinmp » Tue, Mar 13, 2012, 6:40 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #82

zeteo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but I didn't say anything about the reason why water is so cheap. (Smith would explain it takes little effort to procure it - not that different from the marginalist argument.) What matters for the issue at hand is that its utility can be a very small factor in its price .

You're missing the point of marginal utility. Because the price of water is so low, the marginal use of water is not for purposes vital to survival. People water their lawns, fill swimming pools, wash cars, etc. In other words, they use water for things whose utility is equal to its current price, because there's plenty of water left over at that price after all the vital-to-survival needs are met. If the price of wa…

I'm pretty sure the basic assumptions of the economics y'all are discussing are not met because they require concave production functions. According to micro theory (I'm trying to recall Mas-Colell here so maybe way off), a linear production function as we have with internet distribution results in corner solutions of 0 or infinite production, and either way can't be priced (taking record production to be a sunk cost, which it is by common definition).

Point being, any argument that relies on a micro framework is bunk because we've reached a level of technology where convex production sets are no longer an obvious assumption.

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

#133

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 12:12 PM UTC

JackC wrote: post #123

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an important distinction in the categorisation of theft as [primarily] criminal and copyright infringement as [primarily] tortuous which I feel you've simply ignored. The category distinction is vital IMO as it is right that there is greater protection under the law against someone who steals your belongings vs someone who merely duplicates them. If one considers that right to free enjoyment of ones personal…

To be clear: the fact that theft and copyright infringement both relate to interference with alienable rights does not mean that they should be treated the same way. A good legal system takes into account that different kinds of infringement on different kinds of rights should be handled differently. Here's a cool example that includes both civil law and criminal law: in America, if you trespass on someone's property…

>"Copyright in America is calibrated terribly. It's mostly civil rather than criminal"

We get a distorted view based on things like the current extradition of a British man to the USA for having a listings site with links to copyright material. And the whole Kim Dotcom business operated at the international level by USA Government's agencies.

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

#134

Post by dkersten » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #86

dkersten wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this might make it difficult for new artists to get off the ground or discovered. Form organizations which take the money and pay the artists salaries. Now becoming a new artist becomes similar to becoming a new programmer or architect or whatever.

And then how do you determine how much to pay each artist? You have the same problem with programmers, but at least its not as pronouced. I think artists should be paid by endorsements - like the old times, when barons would pay an artist to create a work of art. Only now, we can have people from the internet chip in small amounts. I.e., an artist proposes some art, and those who wants it can promise payment. Once th…

And then how do you determine how much to pay each artist?

Same question can be asked of any salaried worker.

Anyway, once said artist has got some experience and built up their portfolio, there's nothing stopping them from leaving the organisation to work freelance (and be paid by endorsements). The organisation idea was really just a middle tier to allow people to pool their resources and share the rewards, including allowing new artist a way to get into the system.

o what incentivizes people to pay that initial bit, i hear you ask? Some people, especially fans, don't mind paying it. And that is where the value is extracted from.

Recently kickstarter has been proving this to be true! Also the success of the humble indie bundles suggests this is true.

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

#135

Post by dkersten » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 5:55 PM UTC

seunghomattyang wrote: post #113

dkersten wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for free is unfair against the store that stocks the DVD, the trucker who moved it, the actors, producers and supporting staff or the media ads that promoted it is another question. Ummm no. If Joe downloads avatar for free, he is not ripping off anyone who may have been involved in the production, distribution and sale of a DVD - he is ripping off those involved in the pr…

Then is it okay to pirate software too? For instance, is it okay for me to pirate all the apps from Mac App Store since I didn't steal any physical copies?

I never said it was ok to do so. I also never said that nobody gets hurt by not paying. I just said that they weren't the people that maeon3 was suggesting and that saying that pirating the movie hurts everyone who was in some way involved in the production, distribution and sale of the DVD, but thats simply not true - the people involved in the production, distribution and sale of the digital version may be hurt and some of those people (certainly some of the people in the production) will be the same people, but the analogy is not anywhere close to being correct.

Anyway, people who are pro piracy will tell you that yes, it is in fact ok to pirate software too. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, just saying that the hardcore pro piracy people do not find anything wrong regardless of what is being pirated. They will also disagree with the term "piracy", but whatever.

is it okay for me to pirate all the apps from Mac App Store

Sure, why not! My most used "app stores" are the Linux package managers and everything on them is free, so not paying for apps doesn't mean that availability will be affected. No, I'm not saying I think its ok to pirate, but your comment does read as pretty disingenuous to me.

In any case, so many people share music, movies and software all the time without thinking about it, maybe its the businesses who should be adapting? If yesterdays business models are failing, instead of trying to shoehorn them to work through laws and regulations, maybe they should adapt? I'm personally involved in a music industry startup and we're doing exactly that - piracy is promotion to us. I'm also involved in other software things and spend a lot of time talking and thinking about game development and my conclusion is that piracy can largely be sidestepped in all of these markets by... adapting the business model to be piracy tolerant.