[HN Gopher] Russia to legalize software piracy
___________________________________________________________________
Russia to legalize software piracy
Author : Ambolia
Score : 450 points
Date : 2022-03-07 10:41 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (writing.kemitchell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (writing.kemitchell.com)
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Wait, it was illegal in Russia before?
| [deleted]
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| It was illegal but nothing ever got enforced out of my own
| experience.
| akho wrote:
| It was enforced for businesses. I don't think it's enforced
| for private users anywhere.
| kemitchell wrote:
| There was a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when
| foreign vendors tried to the RIAA/MPAA tactic of highly
| publicized enforcement against individuals and small
| institutions. Microsoft, for example. It mostly backfired.
|
| They eventually shifted to enforcing against large entities
| and intermediaries. Same as in the West.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Most countries go after distribution which has been
| somewhat successful.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| It was enforced selectively (as many laws there) with
| occasional arrests of freelance computer technicians. They
| would be asked to do a minor repair and then install
| pirated versions of Windows, MS Office, Autocad etc to
| reach a certain threshold after which it would be qualified
| as an "economic crime on a particularly large scale".
| outside1234 wrote:
| This will just accelerate the centralization of everything in the
| cloud out of the reach of sovereigns.
|
| But ok, go for it.
| colordrops wrote:
| It's not piracy if it's legal.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Bad times for SaaS businesses I guess.
| phpnode wrote:
| Bad times for non-saas businesses you mean?
| dainiusse wrote:
| bad times for everyone
| no_time wrote:
| If that makes you feel any better I have written server
| emulators for more than one SaaS program.
| methyl wrote:
| Bad times for Russian SaaS customers.
| risyachka wrote:
| Russia never was a major source of saas revenue.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Bad times for Ukrainians mostly.
| legalcorrection wrote:
| Honestly seems like a proportional response to the sanctions,
| which have gone so far as to steal the Russian government's
| deposits in foreign banks. Not that those sanctions are or aren't
| justified, but the west had to expect this in response.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| The US should legalize pirating Kaspersky Antivirus.
|
| /s
| squarefoot wrote:
| I would rather uninstall it everywhere for the very high risks
| it could contain backdoors controlled by the Russian govt.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| rocgf wrote:
| You're making it sound as Russia is doing the West a favor by
| going easy on its response. As if Russia is merciful and we
| should be grateful.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Well, they can't go all-in yet. They need to be able to
| increase their countermeasures after the USA introduce more
| rigorous measures.
|
| As someone living in Europe, I'm not happy that the EU was
| forced to impose sanctions on oil and gas, while the USA
| still imports Russian oil. And it's the Europe that will be
| devastated if it comes to nuclear war, both USA are big
| enough to partially survive.
|
| So, yes, every step in avoiding escalation, not going to
| maximum is a good step, if it would increase the duration of
| human life in Europe for a few more years.
| SSLy wrote:
| It wasn't the EU that has escalated the conflict two
| Thursdays ago.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| olliej wrote:
| So? They're also bombing cities, shooting civilians, and mining
| refugee routes.
|
| If software piracy even figures in your judgement of their
| actions there's something wrong with you
| everyone wrote:
| Every cloud has a silver lining I guess?
| blagie wrote:
| I'm not opposed to this. I'm opposed to the West imposing its IP
| regime on the world. I'm supportive of Western copyrights,
| patents, trademarks, and trade secrets in the US and Western
| Europe. However, the concept of IP ownership -- let alone
| specifics of how its structured -- are a cultural and human
| construct.
|
| Other countries should be free to figure out other ways of doing
| this.
|
| Very little of this existed prior to around 1700. It's a
| relatively recent construct too (although there are some
| historical parallels).
|
| I'm not at all convinced we'll make much progress as society if
| we impose our values on everyone, and expect everyone to behave
| the same way. There are fundamentals and externalities -- the war
| on Ukraine is wrong, and we should intervene. However, on
| something like having IP law, let alone breaking it up into
| copyrights/patents/trademarks, let alone stating durations and
| contexts of all of those, this just seems like overreach.
|
| I feel like this is one of those places where corporate lobbyists
| managed to change people's values in a way which is quite
| unfortunate. People learn about IP theft in elementary school, it
| gets integrated into UN human rights documents, and something
| which is really culturally-dependent is viewed as universal. It
| wasn't viewed this way when I was a child.
|
| Even little things make a big difference. We've gone from
| "copyright infringement" to words like stealing and theft.
| They're fundamentally different concepts which were intentionally
| mixed up. If I steal from you, you no longer have what I've
| stolen. If I copy your software, you still have it; I might just
| have deprived you of profits (if I had otherwise bought the
| software).
|
| I'm not arguing against the IP regime in the US/EU, or for
| breaking IP laws. I'm just arguing we shouldn't force our IP
| regime on everyone else.
| whiddershins wrote:
| IP was a major innovation. This is the stance Abraham Lincoln
| took, and I think there is an argument that much of the
| technological progress we have seen is helped by IP law.
|
| The fact that we sat on our hands while China stole our IP for
| two decades is a contributing factor to why Russia felt
| emboldened to attack the Ukraine.
| vlozko wrote:
| I'm going to be that guy. It's not "the Ukraine", it's just
| "Ukraine". There's a significant historical reason why this
| matters.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Would you care to expand?
|
| I've recently dropped the "the", because I understand some
| people object to it. Is this because "The Ukraine" referred
| to a geographical region, while "Ukraine" is the name of a
| country?
| nkurz wrote:
| Mostly that. The theory is that using the definite
| article implies Ukraine is part of some larger region,
| which is a highly charged political statement. This
| Wikipedia article has more details: https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine#English_defini....
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Ah, thanks. Interesting to compare "The Argentine", the
| abandoning of which usage the article
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina explains as a mere
| fashion change.
| 8358373583 wrote:
| I disagree. I don't think giving people a coercive monopoly
| on doing things similar to them helps innovation. I think
| it's one of the main barriers to innovation. It prevents
| iterative improvements and encourages resources to be spent
| on preventing others from competing instead of making a
| better next generation product.
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| This is not about IP regime.
|
| It's about not doing what they agreed for when they signed
| these contracts which are now terminated.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > However, the concept of IP ownership -- let alone specifics
| of how its structured -- are a cultural and human construct.
|
| Isn't everything a human construct? What does that even mean?
| sethrin wrote:
| Many people have a concept of human rights, which we contrast
| rights which are considered to be legal creations (legal
| rights). Frequently people are considered to have a natural
| right to life, whereas the right to vote or own a business
| would be mere legal creations. Jefferson, among others,
| distinguishes copyright as a social construct[0], which
| different societies may feel free to respect or not, in
| consideration only of their own benefit. As pertains to the
| current topic, Russia by this act is disregarding their
| treaty obligations, but not necessarily violating anyone's
| human rights by doing so.
|
| [0] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-0
| 2-0...
| pcdoodle wrote:
| "we should intervene"
|
| That's just like, your opinion, man
| grumple wrote:
| You're sort of building this up as the idea of the US forcing
| its norms and laws on others, but that isn't what this is. The
| merits of protecting IP exist whether or not they are prevalent
| in any country.
|
| When participating in a global economy, other participants
| expect fair dealing. What do you think will happen now with
| Russia? We'll assume they are going to try to steal our tech.
| Instead of trading with them, we won't do business with them at
| all whenever possible. We learned this the hard way with China.
| And their internal incentives to create IP also disappear - who
| would want to spend time building an app in Russia when the guy
| next door is now allowed to steal it and sell it as its own?
| Nobody.
|
| You're going to see much more draconian DRM. User experience
| will suffer. Less tech will be created. People will avoid doing
| business with Russia (and we already see that happening, and it
| was already true to an extent before they started murdering
| Ukrainians). And Russia's economy will continue to fail.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > What do you think will happen now with Russia?
|
| We'll outsource all our manufacturing to them, and freely
| participate in technology transfer along the way, because we
| want access to the market? /s
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Very little of this existed prior to around 1700. It's a
| relatively recent construct too (although there are some
| historical parallels).
|
| You could say that about a lot of things. It's pretty
| irrelevant to the question of if something should be thing or
| not.
|
| But that fact should serve as a caution to people wanting
| _radically_ change it (e.g. abolishment): most of us only have
| direct experience with the problems created by the solution,
| but not the problems the solution solved.
|
| > I'm not at all convinced we'll make much progress as society
| if we impose our values on everyone, and expect everyone to
| behave the same way.
|
| But likewise, we shouldn't compromise our values either. I'm
| not denying that "corporate lobbyists" have a had a pernicious
| effect on IP law, but my understanding is that most of this
| "imposition" has been in the context of the quid-pro-quo of
| trade deals. It's totally legitimate for a country with a
| Western-style IP system to decide it doesn't want to give some
| trading partner favorable trade terms if that partner refuses
| to recognize IP.
| tomxor wrote:
| > the concept of IP ownership -- let alone specifics of how
| its structured -- are a cultural and human construct. [...]
| I'm not at all convinced we'll make much progress as society
| if we impose our values on everyone, and expect everyone to
| behave the same way
|
| When thinking beyond the means (economical based incentive)
| and skipping straight to the end (advancement of human
| technology and culture) - One particularly huge country
| (China) has already been doing an accidental experiment for a
| long time: taking western IP and patents with a pinch of
| salt, and just using them pretty freely (as far as I
| understand it), at least at a national level.
|
| I find the existence of that duality in the world really
| interesting, and it's not exactly one sided because the west
| has been exploiting China and Asia in general in their own
| way. On one side you have economically based idea and
| technology creation incentives with ever increasing
| restrictions; on the other you have all the benefits
| unleashed without restriction, yet without significantly
| affecting the incentive for the source (I'm sure some "not
| rich enough" people will complain it does but frankly the
| economical mechanism have already been pushed too far).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > most of us only have direct experience with the problems
| created by the solution, but not the problems the solution
| solved.
|
| The US copyrights regime was mostly imposed on my country in
| 1994. What do you mean we have no experience with the
| problems it solves?
|
| (Any honest discussion at that time would at a minimum bring
| shorter terms.)
| tablespoon wrote:
| > What do you mean we have no experience with the problems
| it solves?
|
| Some people want to just abolish IP (e.g. patents and
| copyright) because they've read some articles about abuse
| by patent trolls or copyright terms that are too long.
| They're not thinking about (say) the author who spent a
| large amount of effort writing a successful book, just to
| have to continue working a regular job, while all the
| profits go into the pocket of some corporation(s) that are
| under no obligation to pay the author because copyright
| doesn't exist so they have no special rights. Or the books
| that never exist because the author never writes a second
| book, because it's too difficult and stressful to juggle
| writing with a job, and they can't live off the proceeds of
| their previous work.
|
| Legal rights give power to the little guys. Take away those
| rights, and it'll mainly be the big guys who benefit.
| zelon88 wrote:
| So a business in America should have to pay thousands of
| dollars for a Windows Server license despite our society being
| the one who makes windows and russia just gets to steal it?
| Then we have to compete with russia using technology they stole
| from us?
|
| Why don't we all just keep our technology to ourselves. Or does
| that not suit russia because russia can only steal everyone
| else's technology?
| refurb wrote:
| I mean these were and are free to choose how to deal with IP.
|
| The point is _many entered treaties to respect and recognize
| foreign IP_.
|
| And you know why? Because they eventually become
| technologically sophisticated enough that they want _their IP_
| recognized and respected.
|
| You act like this was imposed by the West when it entered into
| voluntarily.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| IP has nothing to do with technical sophistication. I believe
| IP is directly led to culture and greed as people want to
| maximize profits rather than help society and promote ideas.
| simonh wrote:
| That seems counter to the notion of cultural appropriation
| being wrong. If other cultures should be allowed to duplicate
| any of our cultural or economic artefacts wholesale if they
| choose, doesn't that work the other way around?
|
| I know, that's happened a lot in the past, but aren't we moving
| towards recognising that was wrong and figuring out more
| respectful forms of cultural and commercial interchange?
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Counterpoint: cultural appropriation is a good thing. Only
| grifters in cultural leadership dislike it.
| bigger_inside wrote:
| I think this is a deep misunderstanding of cultural
| appropriation, but it is the misunderstanding that has gained
| traction in twitter circles. Cultural appropriation is a
| denunciation of exploitative oppression, not "anything where
| someone copies something that his culture (??) didn't come up
| with".
|
| The problem is when corporations make facade copies of
| cultural heritage to profit from them, while the cultures
| that originated them not only get nothing out of it, but are
| actively oppressed in the meantime. That is your typical Taco
| Bell phenomenon (notice how Taco Bell almost never comes up
| in the public discussion?)
|
| The public discussion is full of examples where some kid
| makes a Native American hairdress from feathers they found.
| No corporation profit, nothing is taken, and as long as it's
| not part of some roleplay where the natives are the bad guys
| to be killed by the good cowboys, it's also not necessarily
| reproductive of oppressive structures. The fact that the
| debate is skewed this way is already a misrepresentation.
|
| Now, a corporation that got billions in tax credits and
| research from the government, making software off the labor
| of underpaid and overworked developers, deprived of their
| revenue model because someone copied it? Not cultural
| appropriation in the least.
|
| A deeper point: The public-facing version of cultural
| appropriation is also low-key ethnic nationalist, because it
| objectifies ethnicities and the belonging to them, and holds
| them eternally stable at that. It reinforces "natural" ideas
| od being a member of any ethnic group, which is the exact
| opposite of any emancipatory discourse on race and ethnicity.
| aembleton wrote:
| Tonight I'm cooking Mushroom Risotto. I'm British. I guess
| the act of cooking it isn't cultural appropriation because
| I'm not making a profit from it. But is the seller of the
| risotto rice appropriating from Italians?
|
| This extends to other things; like I eat potatoes; which
| were domesticated by Native Americans. I purchased mine
| from Lidl which probably makes a profit from them. Is that
| cultural appropriation?
| blihp wrote:
| I think a lot of it depends on how a given product is
| branded/marketed. Mrs. Buttersworth's is a good recent
| example here in the U.S. Had this brand actually been
| originally founded by a kindly grandmother who happened
| to be black and started bottling up her favorite syrup
| recipe, there would be no issue. (or anything that even
| remotely related to how it was branded) Another example
| are current stories about things like Russian Vodkas are
| rebranding (to distance themselves from the current
| situation) when the reality is that the only thing
| Russian about them is the brand name. We do this all the
| time with consumer brands from foods to restaurant chains
| claiming, directly or indirectly, some level of
| authenticity that isn't even remotely there either in
| terms of the product itself or those involved in
| producing it... often neither. It's even worse when said
| brand is actively harming the group they are profiting
| from the association with.
| orwin wrote:
| I don't think cultural appropriation is wrong. I think it's
| mostly original Americans who said 'stop mocking our rites
| and religion' and it grew from there. It grew in the US and
| reached the rest of the Western world quite fast. But as long
| as you're not a dick about it, it should be fine.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| "Cultural appropriation" is newspeak. It defacto must be
| considered to be wrong because the term was invented in order
| to put a negative spin on sharing.
|
| By the same token "discrimination" is seen as being defacto
| wrong even though no-one would take issue with the fact that
| you literally distinguish people by their physical attributes
| "yeah, he's the one with the brown hair".
|
| It literally means "the bad form of cultural copying". As
| "discrimination" in common parlance means "the bad form of
| discrimination".
|
| Contrast with the sentence "how do I discriminate between
| French and German words in this text". In that context,
| 'discriminate' doesn't have a negative bent. But in basically
| any context to do with real people it does.
|
| Linguistics(?) is hard...
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > "discrimination" is seen as being defacto wrong
|
| Discrimination is the act of deciding whether two things
| are the same, or different. Even "racial discrimination"
| would be OK in principle, were it not for the fact that the
| concept of races has been widely been debunked by
| scientists.
|
| To be clear, discriminatory treatment based on people's
| characteristics is deeply objectionable to me.
| 8358373583 wrote:
| I'm progressive enough that I'm frequently called an SJW, but
| I think the concept of cultural appropriation is one of the
| worst ideas humans have invented. Cultures don't own stuff,
| individuals own stuff. Mixing, adapting, and copying from
| each other is how we grow and develop.
| adolph wrote:
| > Cultures don't own stuff, individuals own stuff.
|
| What does it mean to own stuff? Clearly more entity classes
| than individuals can own stuff--much IP is owned by
| companies, a legal fiction of an individual owned by people
| in the class of shareholder with generous but limited
| dispositional power held by people classed as company
| officers.
|
| Some cultures have established foundations and such to own
| things, like the Free Software Foundation or the
| Scientologists. Some fishing rights are granted to certain
| cultures which pre-existed contemporary government.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| I'm in the same position and agree wrt to the term
| ,,cultural appropriation". One example for IP shared by a
| culture would, however, be protected terms of origin, such
| as Champagne or Bourbon.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| That is true, however creating something is work, thus the
| creator should be rewarded for it.
|
| Whether that is by sharing the proceeds of the creation,
| some state budget or whatever is the next question, but we
| need ways for creators to be able to create while
| sustaining a proper life, else there can't be "serious" new
| creative pieces.
|
| And for some works (software, orchestra music, movie, ...)
| you also need not only one person but a large group with
| organisation and all.
| 988747 wrote:
| Can you name the inventor of pizza? If I make a pizza at
| home, do they loose any money? Should it be forbidden for
| non-Italian people to make pizza, on the grounds of
| cultural appropriation?
|
| I think it is exact opposite: the fact that pizza is one
| of the most popular foods worldwide benefits Italians.
| Any Italian can brag: we invented pizza. Also any
| Jamaican can brag: my homies invented reggae music. It
| doesn't matter that much whether a reggae song that you
| can hear in the radio was made by an actual Jamaican or
| not. Copying is the greatest compliment.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| That is in no way a counterpoint to my statement.
|
| The margarita probably was created by Raffaele Esposito
| who had a restaurant and could sell Pizza to a large
| enough degree to refinance it as the value wasn't in the
| recipe, but in the exact way the produced it and having
| an oven and the restaurant and anybody who wanted to sell
| their versions had to invest in an oven and ingredients
| and then needs skills to make a better pizza.
|
| However if i record a music album and I have no
| protection anybody can copy it for free, without any
| investment and in the current system the original
| musicians have no benefit as each copy of the recording
| would be equally well.
| satao wrote:
| Are you implying it doesn't happen right now? I'm brazilian,
| and over here there's cases of american and european
| scientists patenting drugs using components from herbs that
| are traditional to our native people... Then they patent it
| and we can't use our own plants in our industry because it's
| been patented.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Do they patent the plant, or do they patent the processing
| of the plant to make drugs?
| simonh wrote:
| >Are you implying it doesn't happen right now?
|
| No.
| stavros wrote:
| > If other cultures should be allowed to duplicate any of our
| cultural or economic artefacts wholesale if they choose,
| doesn't that work the other way around?
|
| It does. In my opinion, cultural appropriation shouldn't be a
| thing. It's a big deal in the US, but Greeks, Turks and Slavs
| have copied each other's language, food, songs, and
| mannerisms for centuries and we're better off for it. It's
| remixing.
| blagie wrote:
| I think that's confusing a few pieces.
|
| First, cultural appropriation is a white, progressive
| concept. It's not something generally considered /wrong/. If
| I wear Indian clothing in India, Arab clothing in the Middle
| East, or similar, that's usually viewed well in those
| cultures. I think part of this is why one is doing this --
| there's a big difference between wearing a mockery of an
| Cherokee outfit for Halloween with complete ignorance of
| Cherokee culture, and with trying to culturally adapt out of
| respect for a culture. A second, much bigger piece, though,
| is cultural; the Western concept of identity, and the
| signalling mechanisms behind it, are just that: Western
| concepts. That doesn't mean other cultures don't have
| analogous concepts, but they're different in sometimes subtle
| and sometimes significant ways.
|
| Second, violating a patent doesn't involve duplicating
| cultural or economic artefacts. If you've ever written a
| large program, you've probably stepped on dozens of software
| patents, without even knowing it.
|
| Third, there's a difference between the general concept, and
| the specific mechanisms. There is nothing fundamental about
| inventions being protected for 20 years from the date of
| invention, or any of the other specifics of those mechanisms.
|
| Fourth, a lot of this is fundamental to other forms of
| interchange and human interaction. If I sanction a nation
| from using Word, SolidWorks, Adobe CS, etc., one piece are
| the specific economic artefacts. The second piece is the
| ability to interact with all of the creative content those
| economic artefacts are required for. Most of these have
| intentionally locked-down and proprietary formats, sometimes
| with DRM. I feel less bad about cutting someone out of being
| able to use a tool I built, and more bad about cutting
| someone out from being able to interact with any content
| created with that tool. I feel especially bad about cutting
| people out from content they created themselves. If a country
| has piles of videos they created in Adobe CS which they
| suddenly can't use any more, that feels like overreach.
|
| Finally, it's worth acknowledging a lot of the lead in IP
| came from a history of imperialism. Britain has cultural
| artefacts from around the world in its museums, and much of
| Western wealth comes from accumulated interest on plunder
| from around the world. It's not quite clear what a fair
| outcome is here.
|
| I do feel countries should be able to make their own IP
| regimes.
| primroot wrote:
| There are sorts of legally recognized collective IP. But
| IMO this is mainly people trying to make rules invented by
| others work in their favor.
| https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-48360616
| hedgewitch wrote:
| > If I steal from you, you no longer have what I've stolen. If
| I copy your software, you still have it; I might just have
| deprived you of profits (if I had otherwise bought the
| software).
|
| Okay, so what is your suggestion here? Make it legal to make
| the copies? You know that that will only make more companies
| implement more aggressive DRM, right? Because, if you can't
| legally stop people from copying your software, you have to
| stop those who copy it from being able to run it.
|
| This is also why cloud applications with web interfaces are on
| the rise. They don't have to worry about piracy because it's
| literally impossible unless people break into their servers,
| which I'm sure no one is going to argue isn't a crime.
| albertopv wrote:
| Tons of italian companies have to sue chinese ones because they
| copy italian products design, down to screws, and sell them on
| italian market at half the price. Wanna talk about parmesan, a
| wanna be Parmigiano Reggiano? So italian companies have higher
| costs also to pay lawyers to sue? No thanks. You don't like IP?
| Fine, do something else, maybe better, but stealing remains
| stealing, whatever you call it.
| schleck8 wrote:
| Spot on. Trying to argue piracy is some form of liberalism is
| nonsense.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > but stealing remains stealing, whatever you call it.
|
| Well, that is the question, isn't it? You consider mimicry to
| be a form of theft; others disagree.
| [deleted]
| zelon88 wrote:
| "Russian culture isn't conducive to innovation. So russia
| shouldn't be forced to respect intellectual property. If it
| weren't for stolen IP russia would have no IP."
|
| Great argument, Putin.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > I'm not arguing against the IP regime in the US/EU, or for
| breaking IP laws
|
| Maybe you should be.
|
| Personally I am of the stance that IP rights are inherently
| unenforceable once a work is released to the public, especially
| in the digital realm where information copies itself freely.
| Knowledge and art should be freely given and received and IP
| laws are directly opposed to this. There are other ways to
| monetize almost all forms of IP if that is the desired outcome.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| If it's possible to prevent some action entirely by technical
| means, then there is no need for law against it. The
| prohibition against murder is also "unenforceable" in the
| sense that there will never be any murder.
| uncomputation wrote:
| I have an issue with the suffocating IP regime (videos being
| copyright stricken for simple use of works, DRM, rent seeking,
| patent trolls, etc). And if non-Western countries want to
| construct or use their own notions of intellectual "property,"
| then so be it, if it is their own software and their own
| creations.
|
| But Russia is specifically saying you can pirate software from
| countries supporting sanctions i.e. Western software made under
| Western ideas of IP and an expectation of profit for their
| work. If Russia wants to allow pirating Russian software, then
| I don't see the issue. But to buck another country's legal
| framework is a step over the line. If Russia wants to use
| Western software (Photoshop, Microsoft Word, cloud providers),
| they need to respect the Western terms of use.
|
| Take the .cat domain for Catalan. It is Catalonia's right to
| make the terms of use of that domain such that the user must
| support Catalan translations. If you don't want to agree by
| these terms, it is not your right then, to say "well that's a
| Western idea of cultural integrity and I don't agree with that
| and I'm gonna use the domain anyways." It's their domain, their
| software, not yours.
| siruncledrew wrote:
| I think that the value of IP protection makes sense for health
| & safety, and also for small/growing businesses that don't want
| to be shut-out from bad actors.
|
| Where it gets worse is when it gets enforced by some giant
| behemoth as just another tool to maintain dominance and
| essentially forbid competition. It's just extracting money for
| the sake of having more money.
|
| For example, Lay's (owned by PepsiCo) forbidding farmers in
| India from growing the same potatoes that Lay's uses for chips
| because PepsiCo owns a patent on the seeds. There's basically
| no other rationale behind doing stuff like this besides "but my
| money!". Like, the rest of the world should just cave to a
| $227B US conglomerate on everything they want?
|
| At that point, IP isn't even about up keeping freedom or
| justice or whatever, it's just another way to enforce a
| colonialism-esque class hierarchy via capitalism.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Guessing Russia is not taking a stand against IP or copyright
| at all. Just making it legal for them to steal from non-Russian
| owners. Don't think they will remove copyright for Russian
| creators.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| By definition it cannot be theft. Because of sanctions, the
| Russians wouldn't be allowed to pay for Western software
| anyways, so there is no difference to the bottom line.
|
| Whereas if they pirate Russian software or software they can
| buy, there is an impact to the bottom line.
|
| As a result it can be seen as a logically consistent
| position.
| electrondood wrote:
| If I'm banned from a store, it's still theft if I take
| goods from that store without paying.
| akomtu wrote:
| Software isnt taken, it's replicated like photographs.
| postalrat wrote:
| In this case the store doesn't exist due to sanctions.
|
| So if you take goods from a store that doesn't exist is
| it stealing?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Because the store can't sell those goods. In this case
| the store can still sell the goods, and there is no lost
| revenue. There is not a single analogy to theft.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| No one is forcing anything. Any country can do whatever it
| wants in it's legal system. If you want to become an economic
| island like this, it's unlikely anyone will force anything on
| you.
|
| What matters is whether then you want to trade with the
| countries who's IP you are using. At that point it becomes
| extremely unfair to the country that developed the IP.
|
| If China steals industry secrets that took billions to develop,
| and then sells those same products for cheaper (because they
| get the IP for free) in the west, is that fair?
|
| I don't like your rhetoric of the west using force. There is no
| force or legal requirement if you don't engage with the west.
| But of course everyone wants to engage with the west, but at
| that point you have to come to a mutually agreed trade and
| legal pact. This is normal. This is also voluntary on the part
| of both countries.
| blagie wrote:
| I think this has a pretty limited view of history. If you
| think no one is forcing anything, I'd encourage you to look
| at how Commodore Perry opened Japan with gunships, the Opium
| War which did much the same to China, the East India Company,
| and similar incidents. Countries which wanted to stay closed
| to Western-style trade didn't do very well.
|
| The tools have gotten more nuanced, but they're still at
| play. There are quite a few books on the ways the West
| subverts democratic structures in Africa in order to be able
| to extract natural resources. China is now getting in on this
| game too.
|
| We still use militaries to protect Western trade interests,
| especially around key shipping lanes like the Panama and Suez
| canals.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Well I was speaking in a modern context.
|
| But if you want to speak about it in a historical context,
| I would ask you explain what you mean by the "west" and the
| west forcing their values.
|
| And I would note you are speaking to someone who's
| country's been invaded by mongols, ottomans, and russians
| within the last 1000 years. They all seemed to want to
| "force" their values on the people living here.
|
| Is this a western thing?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I think you guys may be coming from different cultural
| contexts.
|
| In the previous commenter's context the West forcing its
| ideals informs his/her comments. In your context the
| mongols, ottomans, and russians forcing their ideals
| informs your comments.
|
| You're both probably right.
|
| At the same time, it's ludicrous to tell a, say, Zambian,
| that no one forced anything on them in the "modern
| context". When we know we forced everything from their
| laws, right down to their very borders onto every nation
| in sub-saharan africa. We even forced them to sign the
| very treaties we're saying were not forced on them. The
| leaders who didn't sign, we killed, and put a new leader
| in place who signed.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Zambia, just like Venezuala or Cuba, or North Korea, is
| free to leave whatever system was forced on them by the
| west. And they can probably steal western trade secrets
| without many repercussions.
|
| Hungary and Poland can test whether they can get outside
| of the EU's legal jurisdictions and whether they can lead
| decent lives doing that.
|
| Just to reitirate, ultimately these things are actually
| voluntary. But they come with consequences. And it's not
| like these western values of trade, and individual rights
| are really western any more, when Japan and Korea has had
| success with them, arguably China was well (before Xi).
|
| But there are consequences if you want to go it alone,
| and it's questionable whether other economic systems
| actually work as well.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| The Zambians have opted out. Have you been there
| recently? The people there have taken the Chinese
| opportunity and run with it, probably because of what
| they perceived to be a lack of opportunity in the Western
| system.
|
| I think as the West attempts to keep some of these
| nations in Western orbit, we need to more openly
| acknowledge some of the issues our system has caused them
| in the past. Then we should lay out for them a credible
| reset that compares favorably to their Chinese
| opportunity. Absent that, the Chinese will continue to
| gain outsized influence across Africa because Africans
| will continue to make decisions that really are just
| common sense in the current context.
|
| Larger point being that we can't simply claim we have not
| forced anything on people and these places are acting
| irrationally. From the perspective of a lot of places
| outside of the West, things have been forced on them, and
| they are beginning to take what are, from their
| perspective, perfectly rational actions to rectify these
| issues.
| blagie wrote:
| No, we're not all probably right. You're right. I'm
| right. cloutchaser is simply making posts ignorant of
| cultures and history. This is not uniquely western, but
| his list is just wrong:
|
| - Mongols did not force ideals or cultures on the people
| they conquered. If you surrendered and paid tribute, you
| were free to do as you pleased.
|
| - The Ottomans were mixed; you were pressured but not
| forced. Non-Muslims, for example, paid higher taxes.
|
| Most long-lived empires let people do their thing. The
| Romans lasted for a millennium, and finally collapsed
| when (and in part because) they tried to impose Roman
| values on everyone, and that turned out to be more
| expensive than the empire could sustain.
|
| These also aren't historic; I posted examples from the
| 1800s, but also recent ones.
|
| The comment about Korea and individualism is just crazy
| too; Korea is probably the most deeply Confucian culture
| left.
|
| Pointing out all of the historic and cultural errors
| would be an essay longer than the comments.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| You conveniently left out the Russians/soviets.
|
| And what you say about ottomans is also wrong. You should
| speak to historians in the affected countries.
|
| Mongols - perhaps you are right, if you were left alive,
| which was mostly women and children. So I guess for them
| they got to live free in the mongol empire...?
| blagie wrote:
| I left out the Russians because they did impose quite a
| lot. In theory, the entire goal was to spread Communist
| ideology. In practice, it was a lot more imperialistic
| than that, but you were definitely under a boot.
|
| The level of ignorance here is staggering. The Mongols
| were pretty straightforward. For the most part, they
| would politely ask you to surrender. If you did, you were
| left alone to live as you saw fit, as part of a trade
| network, Mongol-friendly governance, and paying tribute.
| No one got killed. If you fought and lost, there was
| wholesale slaughter. Everyone got killed. There were a
| few in-betweens. There was no scenario like the one
| you're describing. The in-betweens might, for example,
| have skilled workers and artisans carted off.
|
| I won't get into a back-and-forth about the Ottomans. You
| have no idea my background, and you presume too much. You
| have no idea who I am, or whom I've spoken to.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Industry secrets are a freely-chosen _alternative_ to IP;
| they 're not the same as IP. Proper IP protection _requires_
| disclosure and is either time-limited (wrt. copyrights and
| patents) or constrained so as not to impede competition
| (trademarks). When IP is extended beyond these boundaries, it
| becomes wrong and a severe drag on economic growth. Such as
| when IP-related laws are used to impinge on fair dealing,
| fair use and first-sale rights, e.g. by enforcing oppressive
| DRM.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Or when patents are extended by _yet another_ 15 years,
| because of a minor /trivial update to the invention. Or
| when (criminal) copyright is extended by _yet another_ 70
| years, long after the original author has died.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm not super fond of the notion of IP, and I have lots of
| criticisms of "the western IP regime"; however, it's incorrect
| to frame this as "imposing western IP regime" in any sense that
| implies that "imposing one's regime" is immoral. In other
| words, this is just a trade agreement, and all parties have the
| right to impose their conditions. Trade only ensues if both
| parties are content with the conditions. Arguing that one
| party's conditions are "imposing" while the other's aren't is
| nonsensical.
|
| Your suggestion that the west should be required to trade with
| countries which don't respect western IP policies is _actually
| an imposition_ insofar as it imposes on western nations '
| freedoms of association, but allowing countries to determine
| their own trade provisions isn't an imposition.
|
| I'll hazard an analogy: if I refuse to debate certain people on
| the Internet who don't adhere to my rhetorical standards, am I
| "imposing my regime on everyone else" (and thus I should be
| required to debate everyone who wants to debate me)?
|
| EDIT: significantly revised to (hopefully) improve clarity.
| qsort wrote:
| I completely agree with this, and I'm an abolitionist. We
| either abolish IP for everyone, or recognizing each other's
| IPs is the bare minimum for a trade agreement.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Trade agreements usually begin with far more tangible and
| fundamental agreements to allow physical goods, stop
| tariffs, and allow for health/safety standards and
| inspections.
|
| IP agreements are far more complex and are usually
| negotiated on top/after the initial agreement.
| yeahsure8 wrote:
| lkrubner wrote:
| "if we impose our values on everyone"
|
| When a country signs a treaty, it is agreeing to something,
| presumably because it sees some benefit in it. It is entering
| into a kind of contract, from which there are presumably
| multiple benefits to all participants. Nothing is being imposed
| on anyone. It is being freely chosen by the governments that
| participate.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| More democratic nations ought to have the self-respect to
| repudiate treaties their fathers ratified that they no longer
| like.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Consensual transactions can still be coercive. See Hollywood
| "casting couch" practices as an example.
| blagie wrote:
| If a country signs a treaty while a US gunship is sitting in
| it's port, it sees a clear benefit of not having a "regime
| change" or a war.
|
| If a Nigerian politician signs a treaty while receiving
| bribes or election support from a Western or Chinese oil
| company, that doesn't mean "a country" sees a benefit.
|
| If a country signs a treaty at a risk of being ostracized by
| the world, it's taking the lesser of two evils.
|
| And if you take a child bride from a war zone, it's a free
| exchange, with both sides seeing benefit. However, that
| doesn't mean it's fair or non-coercive. Power imbalances can
| allow for pretty nasty, unfair deals.
|
| I have a comment elsewhere in this thread with examples, both
| modern and going back 200 years.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Of course, "the western IP regime" didn't become ubiquitous
| because of these kinds of coercive practices even if some
| of them have happened historically. They happened because
| both sides saw a benefit. Of course, even absent malicious
| coercion, power imbalances can remain, but invoking
| "fairness" implies some objective (or otherwise agreeable)
| standard which patently doesn't exist. Just say you wish
| Russia (or whomever) had more negotiating power if that's
| what you mean. The closest we can get to an objective
| standard is: each side can _freely_ (i.e., absent malicious
| coercion) choose for themselves.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| Like the treaty where the US guaranteed the territorial
| integrity of Ukraine against Russia in exchange for
| denuclearization? Hm.
| pfisherman wrote:
| You mean the treaty where Russia promised not to invade
| Ukraine?
| [deleted]
| zajio1am wrote:
| AFAIK it was not international treaty, just political
| agreement not ratified by signing countries.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| If it didn't get approved by the US Senate (and, hint hint,
| the Budapest Memorandum didn't) then the treaty is not
| binding on the US. Other countries need to stop taking
| anything the US says or promises in international relations
| seriously until it goes through the senate. And admittedly,
| the US needs to stop making promises until it's sure it has
| the needed votes in the senate first.
| verisimi wrote:
| Are you an individual or a country though?
|
| Did you sign a contract to be aligned with whatever the
| individuals running your country decide that you should do?
| sschueller wrote:
| Really? Every time I want to open a bank account in
| Switzerland I am asked if I am an American citizen. I am not
| asked if I am a citizen of another country or any other
| specific place. I am only asked if I am an American citizen.
|
| Are you asked if you are Swiss citizen when you open a bank
| account in America?
|
| Per FATCA treaty you should be but that isn't happening
| because the mighty power the US holds over anyone dealing
| with USD. If a US bank doesn't share its Swiss tax cheats
| nothing happens. If a Swiss bank hides them they get taken to
| the cleaners and can loose to do business with USD which is a
| death blow for any bank.
| politelemon wrote:
| > Nothing is being imposed on anyone. It is being freely
| chosen by the governments that participate.
|
| Not the case at all. Treaties are sometimes compromises and
| in sometimes coercion under the diplomatic guise of choice.
|
| Otherwise there would be no need for a treaty and nations
| could choose to enforce others' values of their own free
| will.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Not the case at all. Treaties are sometimes ... coercion
|
| Exceptions don't refute the general case.
|
| > Otherwise there would be no need for a treaty and nations
| could choose to enforce others' values of their own free
| will.
|
| The point of a trade treaty is for each party to formally
| affirm that they will abide by the other's conditions. This
| is necessary irrespective of coercion.
| fao_ wrote:
| Oh, they did? Let's look at how America prevented Africa from
| manufacturing HIV treatments """ In
| 1997, South Africa tried one tack. It passed a law to allow
| the importation of patented medicines that had been
| produced or sold in another nation's market with the
| consent of the patent owner. For example, if the
| drug was sold in India, it could be imported into Africa from
| India. This is called "parallel importation," and it
| is generally permitted under international trade law
| and is specifically permitted within the European
| Union. However, the United States government
| opposed the bill. Indeed, more than opposed. As the
| International Intellectual Property Association
| characterized it, "The U.S. government pressured South Africa
| ... not to permit compulsory licensing or parallel
| imports." 3 Through the Office of the United States
| Trade Representative, the government asked South Africa
| to change the law -- and to add pressure to that request, in
| 1998, the USTR listed South Africa for possible
| trade sanctions. That same year, more than
| forty pharmaceutical companies began proceedings in
| the South African courts to challenge the government's
| actions. The United States was then joined by other
| governments from the EU. Their claim, and the claim
| of the pharmaceutical companies, was that South Africa
| was violating its obligations under international law by
| discriminating against a particular kind of patent
| -- pharmaceutical patents. The demand of these
| governments, with the United States in the lead, was that
| South Africa respect these patents as it respects
| any other patent, regardless of any effect on the
| treatment of AIDS within South Africa. We
| should place the intervention by the United States in
| context. No doubt patents are not the most important
| reason that Africans don't have access to drugs.
| Poverty and the total absence of an effective health care
| infrastructure matter more. But whether patents are the most
| important reason or not, the price of drugs has an
| effect on their demand, and patents affect price.
| And so, whether massive or mar- ginal, there was an
| effect from our government's intervention to stop the flow of
| medications into Africa. By
| stopping the flow of HIV treatment into Africa, the United
| States government was not saving drugs for United
| States citizens. This is not like wheat (if they eat
| it, we can't); instead, the flow that the United
| States intervened to stop was, in effect, a flow of
| knowledge: information about how to take chemicals
| that exist within Africa, and turn those chemicals
| into drugs that would save 15 to 30 million lives.
| """
|
| https://archive.org/stream/free_culture/freeculture_djvu.txt
| _djo_ wrote:
| This exact scenario has been repeated with COVID vaccines
| too.
| jdrc wrote:
| I don't disagree, the IP framework should be minimal, but
| you'll find the most staunch supporters are outside the US. If
| anything, the internet culture normalized piracy. It's
| ridiculous that in 2022 we re limiting what people can do with
| recipes, cheeses, bag designs, rounded corners, and cheap
| drugs. It doesnt have to be all-or-nothing, but IP has grown
| too much.
| coding123 wrote:
| We really don't limit that stuff if you want to use it for
| home use. No one from KRAFT is going to come after you for
| trying to make KRAFT AMERICAN SINGLES at home to save money.
|
| They are going to come after you if you try to sell them to
| MAKE money or tell others how to make it.
| shoulderfake wrote:
| muyuu wrote:
| > "However, the concept of IP ownership -- let alone specifics
| of how its structured -- are a cultural and human construct."
|
| This "X is a social construct" meme has degenerated from
| meaning "it could have been designed/evolved differently" to
| "it doesn't matter, because _it is relative_ so _it might as
| well not be_ " - it's a terrible meme. There is a very big
| difference between claiming something is very wrong AND it
| follows an arbitrary decree or custom that was unjust, and
| claiming that whatever is socially constructed is also wrong.
| Pretty much every aspect of social life is a social construct.
| Justice is a social construct. Not killing each other over the
| slightest disagreement is a social construct. Pretty much every
| boundary, every aspect and definition that gives people meaning
| is a social construct.
|
| The case for somehow breaking up IP laws regionally, I don't
| think it's a very good one because it would effectively cut out
| entire regions from many developments. But "it's just a social
| construct" - that just doesn't make any case either way.
|
| BTW having separate, insular knowledge is what the current
| situation evolved from. Mutual certification and validation -
| say Rospatent being integrated into the Madrid System (
| https://rospatent.gov.ru/en/activities/international_coopera...
| ) - is just a way to remove insularity and reduce costs for
| smaller IP owners without big pockets behind. What Russia is
| doing here is basically reneging accords, not some valiant pro-
| IP-freedom effort. This is a bit like US prints pirating the
| hell out of every British (+Empire) author after US
| independence. Just getting away with it, not some Libertarian
| movement.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| IP is a method for sharing knowledge instead of withholding it.
|
| You're whole statement hasn't suggested any better approach and
| is flawed in it's core.
|
| That aside, this article isn't about IP either...
| greggsy wrote:
| > Very little of this existed prior to around 1700. It's a
| relatively recent construct too
|
| A lot has happened in the past 300 years...
| lend000 wrote:
| If I were king of the US for a day, I think the lowest hanging
| fruit would be cutting virtually all IP durations in half and
| eliminating submarine patents. I might even go further for
| copyrights, and eliminating many types of software patents. It
| would help businesses, it would help consumers, it would help
| most content producers -- the only group that wouldn't benefit
| are lawyers.
| [deleted]
| vanderZwan wrote:
| For an interesting real-world case of ignoring IP laws, one
| might look at the history of Philips and its light bulbs:
|
| - The Netherlands didn't have patent laws in the decades that
| Edison was introducing his lamps
|
| - Philips bought up the machines of competitors that Edison
| drove out of business through his patent monopoly and started
| producing lamps en masse in the Netherlands
|
| - more than a few researches of said former competitors joined
| Philips' R&D crew, presumably partially out of spite, partially
| because it was the only place where they could continue their
| research
|
| - this combination of experts and not giving a damn about
| patents resulted in really quick innovation at Philips'
| factories, meaning their light bulbs soon were both better and
| cheaper than anyone else's (of course, this only lasted until
| the light bulb manufacturers formed a cartel to introduce
| manufactured obsolescence).
|
| - eventually the Netherlands caved in to international pressure
| to introduce patent laws. By then Philips was so huge that they
| started abusing it for patent trolling of their own.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Every country ignores copyright in the beginning. America did
| it too but it is not polite to mention this now.
|
| But there is a tipping point when international enforcement
| of copyright and patents starts to work in your favour.
| rob74 wrote:
| About this "manufactured obsolescence of light bulbs"
| conspiracy theory which gets repeated over and over again:
| it's not that simple. Light bulbs have a spectacularly bad
| efficiency already, but the early light bulbs with their
| extremely long life were even worse. To quote Wikipedia, for
| a given light bulb, "A 5% reduction in voltage will double
| the life of the bulb, but reduce its light output by about
| 16%". So it's a tradeoff: if you make the filament thick
| enough, you'll have a light bulb which lasts for decades, but
| shines very dimly while consuming a lot of electricity. To
| improve efficiency, you can make the filament thinner, but
| then it'll burn out faster.
| jart wrote:
| Here's what an everlasting lightbulb looks like.
| https://youtu.be/jx1d3j1IEoI?t=73 I wish they weren't
| illegal in california.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Funny how that is always used as a counter-argument when
| nobody gave a shit about light-bulb efficiency until three
| decades ago. Like, I'm sure it's technically true. I
| _highly_ doubt this was in any way a motivation back in the
| day, especially since light bulbs, as inefficient as they
| are, were still much better than the candles and gaslight
| that preceded them.
|
| There is a difference between a conspiracy theory and a
| well-documented conspiracy. The things the Phoebus Cartel
| did falls squarely into the latter, including the planned
| obsolescence.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
| runnerup wrote:
| It's not just efficiency. Super long lasting incandescent
| are also very dim and very red.
|
| Many (most?) people preferred both more light and a less
| extremely warm color temperature.
| iso1210 wrote:
| You'd care if you were plugging up 1kW lightbulbs instead
| of 100W bulbs.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Those are called space heaters :)
|
| In fact a company in Germany tried to circumvent the EU
| ban on lightbulbs by calling then heatballs. Makes sense
| because as a heater they're very efficient.
| shagie wrote:
| One trick of cold rooms and frozen pipes - put a light
| bulb in there.
|
| In the (old) house that I'm in, there's a room that is
| for all practical purposes, under the garage. It is very
| poorly insulated and for some reason, some water pipes
| ran through it. On a cold winter, the pipes can freeze.
|
| So, there's a lightbulb in there that for several years
| kept the pipes from freezing. The pipes have since been
| rerouted.
|
| The next step up from just a lightbulb is to put a Y
| connector with two lightbulbs on it and screw a dusk to
| dawn sensor into one of the branches and then another
| lightbulb into that. This way, if the primary lightbulb
| burns out, the other one will turn on.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| It's still a thing in Poland. They are either sold as
| heatballs or workshop light (doesn't have strobe effect
| which could be potentially dangerous around saws). That
| was mostly when fluorescent lightbulbs were the only
| alternative. These days people go for LED lightbulbs
| instead.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Makes sense because as a heater they're very efficient.
|
| Resistive heat (like a light bulb or space heater) is
| terribly _inefficient_. Resistive heat up high (in a
| ceiling or on a light) is even worse than resistive heat
| at ground level, because the heat escapes the dwelling
| without heating the occupants in the room much.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > Resistive heat (like a light bulb or space heater) is
| terribly inefficient.
|
| Resistive heat has efficiency ~1. That is better that
| almost any other heating source with exception of heat
| pumps and cogeneration. If we consider visible light as a
| separate gain, then light bulb has efficiency ~1.02
|
| > Resistive heat up high (in a ceiling or on a light) is
| even worse than resistive heat at ground level, because
| the heat escapes the dwelling without heating the
| occupants in the room much.
|
| For light bulb, i guess most energy is dissipated by IR
| radiation and only small part by convection. So it heats
| whole room and occupants, but not air.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Resistive heat has efficiency ~1
|
| It does if you only consider the efficiency of the
| electricity -> heat conversion, but electricity
| generation itself is often not that efficient. It can be
| a lot more efficient to go fuel -> heat than fuel ->
| electricity -> heat.
| blihp wrote:
| I have no idea what the percentages are but based on a
| lifetime of anecdotal experience esp with incandescent,
| I'd bet you're wrong. Being across the room from a light
| bulb will warm you a bit, but nothing like proximity to
| the bulb, especially when you're above it.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| A bare lightbulb is almost an anisotropic point source.
| You can put a reflector around it to target the IR in
| some direction. Its energy efficiency at the bulb is the
| same, i.e. nearly perfect. The energy delivered to target
| is different.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| You're also being hit with more IR when you're closer.
| That being said, getting the same amount of light from an
| LED seems to only take 10% as much power, but they're
| also probably putting out much less IR, but LEDs still
| heat up a little, ...
| mlyle wrote:
| > That is better that almost any other heating source
|
| ... if you don't charge generation and transmission
| inefficiencies against it. High efficiency natural gas
| heating systems are 98% efficient; compare to natural gas
| combined cycle plants that are ~60% efficient, plus a few
| percent more lost to transmission and distribution.
|
| > with exception of heat pumps
|
| Sure, that's the actually-efficient source of heat from
| electricity.
|
| > For light bulb, i guess most energy is dissipated by IR
| radiation and only small part by convection.
|
| For incandescent bulbs, this is unrealistic. The bulb is
| quite hot and heats the air around it and the fixture.
|
| Moreover, of the IR, a whole lot _also_ strikes the
| fixture and is conducted into the ceiling.
| zajio1am wrote:
| ... if you don't charge generation and transmission
| inefficiencies against it.
|
| Well yes. Statement 'efficiency of X' generally means
| 'useful work of X / relevant energy input into X on X
| boundary', not including efficiency of whole supply chain
| from primary energy source.
| pooper wrote:
| > Resistive heat (like a light bulb or space heater) is
| terribly inefficient.
|
| My personal concept of resistive heat is effective comes
| from a YouTube channel called Technology Connections. The
| argument is that almost all of the energy taken in by an
| electric resistive heater is given out as heat so it is
| pretty close to 100% efficiency. I understand that a heat
| pump is practically a better alternative for almost all
| use cases though.
|
| Similarly, speaking of electric light bulbs, my
| understanding is there is no reason why an LED light bulb
| shouldn't last over ten years of continuous use. At least
| that is my impression from this reddit comment (please
| correct me if I am wrong)
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/leunb1/
| why...
|
| > There are many poorly manufactured LED lights out
| there. The LED itself is typically fine, but the driver
| electronics in the base tend to fail on poor quality
| products.
|
| > I was having lots of failures for a while, but much
| less lately as I've tried to look for more brand name
| products.
| liminvorous wrote:
| I think heatpumps are something like 400% efficient for
| domestic heating, depending on outfoor temperature and so
| forth, so I guess resistive heating is inefficient by
| comparison, though I agree it seems weird to call close
| to 100% efficient "terribly inefficient". Probably losing
| heat from your lightbulbs to whatever is on the other
| side of your cieling is a significant factor too.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I agree it seems weird to call close to 100% efficient
| "terribly inefficient"
|
| A lot of my winter and nighttime electricity comes from
| natural gas.
|
| 50-60% of the heat energy in natural gas can get turned
| into electricity and make it to my house.
|
| Then, it can be used to heat my ceiling a light bulb,
| where almost half of the heat immediately escapes my
| home. This is not a very good way to heat my house,
| versus my high-efficiency natural gas central air system
| that is more than 95% efficient in using the energy in
| natural gas to heat my home: it's about 3x worse.
|
| Of course, _even more efficient_ would be to use the
| natural gas to make electric power that runs a heat pump.
| That could be 200% efficient end-to-end.
| blihp wrote:
| And yet I've had two (name brand) LED bulbs die in the
| past year with <3 years of operational life. The drivers
| in most of these bulbs are garbage.
| terr-dav wrote:
| It's a shame that they can advertise the life of the
| diode itself with no regard for the rest of the
| electronics.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The second problem with LEDs is heat. LEDs produce a lot
| less heat than incandescents, but they also deal much
| worse with getting hot. Thus you need large (for surface
| area) and/or expensive (due to more expensive materials
| with high conductivity) heat sinks. Cheaper bulbs will
| tend to cheap out on this aspect, but there are also
| fundamental constraints especially in bulbs designed to
| fit traditional fittings.
| samatman wrote:
| There also are (or were) a lot of consumer products which
| used ordinary incandescents for heat. The familiar
| example to Americans of a certain age is the EZ-Bake
| Oven, but there was a long tail of others, because if you
| wanted an off-the-shelf source for ~40-150W of heat, and
| the light is either a plus or neutral, it was tough to
| beat an Edison bulb and socket.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| Another example of this:
|
| Bird sanctuaries are harmed by the ban in some ways
| (though in the meantime they've no doubt found
| alternatives) because incandescent bulbs make great
| heaters.[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/incandescent-
| bulb-ban-...
| mywittyname wrote:
| > I highly doubt this was in any way a motivation back in
| the day, especially since light bulbs, as inefficient as
| they are, were still much better than the candles and
| gaslight that preceded them.
|
| There are still examples of these early light bulbs in
| museums and such. They are very, very dim, producing
| light akin to that of a hair dryer. A modern person would
| be pretty shocked at just how little light these things
| put out. It's the reason gas street lamps stuck around
| into the 40s and 50s; nearly outlasting the Phoebus
| Cartel.
| danShumway wrote:
| None of which is evidence that a cartel was necessary to
| enforce different standards; consumer preference would
| have solved that problem on its own.
|
| Power efficiency problems only require cooperation to
| solve in instances where the downsides aren't immediately
| visible to the consumer (ie, long-term decreased power
| costs, labeling, environmental costs). But people
| definitely weren't worried about environmental efficiency
| of light bulbs when the Phoebus Cartel started up. For
| consumer-visible deficiencies (as in literally how much
| visible light a lightbulb produces), you don't need
| collusion to convince consumers to make the switch to a
| clearly (pun intended) better product.
|
| It's worth noting just how janky and circuitous these
| standards were as a way of increasing efficiency, given
| that Phoebus Cartel had perfectly good measures for
| efficiency that they could have targeted instead. There
| were not rules for minimum lumens, or max wattage, or
| minimum efficiency; there were only rules on maximum
| lifespan. In fact, for their "class B" category of lamps,
| not only did the Phoebus Cartel not impose minimum
| efficiency measures, they actually included an _upper_
| bound on how efficient Class B lamps were allowed to be.
|
| I think it's extremely unlikely that the Phoebus Cartel
| was primarily worried about the environmental costs of
| inefficient light bulbs, and I think it's extremely
| unlikely that in the absence of a cartel consumers would
| have been unable to tell the difference between a dim
| lightbulb and a bright one when making purchasing
| decisions. The most likely explanation of their behavior
| is the simplest one; they set constraints designed to
| maximize profits and decrease the risk of large
| competitors out-innovating each other, and then designed
| engineering optimizations and standards to fit into those
| constraints, not the other way around.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| People cared, that's why large office buildings were
| using flourescent lights in the 1960s. _Homeowners_ didn
| 't care, because incandescent lights had a more pleasing
| color spectrum and the cost of running them was
| insignficant in the overall household budget, even with
| their inefficiency.
| rob74 wrote:
| Errr... let me quote from the Wikipedia article you
| linked:
|
| > _Some engineers deemed 1,000 hours a reasonable figure
| to balance the various operational aspects of an
| incandescent bulb, since longer lifespan means reduced
| efficacy (lumens per watt): a longer-life bulb of a given
| wattage puts out less light (and therefore proportionally
| more heat) than a shorter-life bulb of the same wattage.
| Nevertheless, long-life incandescent bulbs were and are
| available with lifespan ratings up to 2,500 hours, and
| these do in fact produce less light per watt._
|
| What I was trying to say in my previous comment was that
| while there _was_ a cartel which _did_ reduce the
| lifetime of commonly-used light bulbs, they didn 't do it
| solely to increase their profits - there was an actual
| technical tradeoff involved, and they chose a figure
| which provided (in their opinion) a good balance of all
| the involved parameters. That's what always gets
| forgotten when this story is mentioned.
| danShumway wrote:
| > they didn't do it solely to increase their profits
|
| But they also did pretty obviously do it in part to
| increase their profits.
|
| The cartel was formed in part as a response to the
| volatility of the lightbulb market (there was so much
| competition it was difficult for any company to stay
| dominant or to maintain stable/predictable profits), and
| was followed by a large increase of sales for the
| cartel's members.
|
| Short of long-term environmental costs (which nobody was
| seriously worrying about in the early 1900s), there's
| very little reason to standardize the light output,
| efficiency, and lifespan of a bulb, which could instead
| be determined by consumer choice in a free market.
|
| If the Pheobes Cartel was simply setting labeling
| standards, maybe it would be debatable whether or not
| there was any bad intention. But it remains a good
| example of planned obsolescence in part _because_ of the
| excuses engineers used at the time, which were pretty
| clearly not the entire reason for cartel 's formation,
| but were used to dismiss criticism of reduced
| competition.
|
| It's a good lesson for people to learn: planned
| obsolescence is usually accompanied by a couple of
| engineering reasons for the tradeoffs, and sometimes
| those tradeoffs are justifiable in a vacuum. But planned
| obsolescence removes the ability for the consumer to
| choose their own tradeoffs and to optimize for their own
| needs, and instead it prioritizes making specific
| technical tradeoffs that just coincidentally happen to
| benefit the company's bottom line.
| quxpar wrote:
| The collusion between massive companies to keep out
| smaller competitors is the thrust of the matter, not what
| levers they pulled.
| blihp wrote:
| Here's another quote from the article:
|
| > The cartel lowered operational costs and worked to
| standardize the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1,000
| hours[6] (down from 2,500 hours),[6] and raised prices
| without fear of competition. The cartel tested their
| bulbs and fined manufacturers for bulbs that lasted more
| than 1,000 hours.
|
| The simple fact that they explicitly set a lower
| operational life target rather than setting a minimum
| target tells me everything I need to know about what they
| were trying to do. The additional fact that they fined
| manufacturers who exceeded the target doesn't leave much
| room for speculation.
|
| If they had any interest whatsoever in efficiency as the
| driver, the targets would have been based on an
| efficiency target like lumens per watt rather than life
| expectancy.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Personally, I think the color and higher luminosity per
| light bulb (both very desired features at the times of
| incandescent lighting) were what made those bulbs
| successful.
|
| Even though those companies made an effort to push the
| bulbs (and were very happy with the result), and they
| were overall cheaper for the customer than the long-lived
| ones, I don't think any of those factors is impactful
| enough to explain the change on the entire market. Notice
| that those companies didn't own the entire market at the
| time, just a huge fraction of it. If people wanted the
| yellower bulbs, they could get them.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It's not just a theory. It's real. There was enforcement
| and everything, and decisions made to increase profit at
| cost of harm to the consumer. Veritasium did a video on it
| if you'd like to follow up there, and it's sourced.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > About this "manufactured obsolescence of light bulbs"
| conspiracy theory which gets repeated over and over again:
|
| You should be really cautious when using the phrase
| "conspiracy theory" especially when talking about a cartel
| for which we have plenty of historical evidences.
|
| Of course the Phoebus cartel isn't responsible for all
| problems with light bulbs, and it didn't even worked as
| well as it was supposed to and not for as long as it was
| supposed to, but it is still a real thing.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| "Very little of this existed prior to around 1700."
|
| That's because books were hand-made items, the industrial
| revolution hadn't begun, and there was no concept of IP.
|
| >If I copy your software, you still have it; I might just have
| deprived you of profits
|
| Well, yes. Ease of copying is a non-issue, because the real
| cost is in _creation_.
|
| Of course it's analogous to theft, because someone very
| literally ends up with less money in their pocket.
|
| And I make that point as someone who has seen multiple
| developers quit one particular space (music software) because
| piracy made it impossible for them to earn a living.
|
| Pretending this is about what _you_ want is simply narcissistic
| selfishness. There are two parties in these transactions,
| sometimes they 're small independent developers and not giant
| corporates, and piracy has very real effects on their
| livelihood.
| derefr wrote:
| Piracy is only "analogous to theft" if the "thief" is making
| a choice between paying vs. pirating.
|
| I personally don't know a single software pirate who would
| have actually bought the things they've pirated. Mostly they
| just would have gone without the software, probably using
| some free alternative instead. There's no value lost by
| piracy here, because there was no potential to capture value
| from these users in the first place.
|
| Pirates are often teenagers without a single dollar to their
| name to spend on software, but all the time in the world to
| explore shady websites for warez. Later, once they have
| money, they buy software!
| ls65536 wrote:
| > Of course it's analogous to theft, because someone very
| literally ends up with less money in their pocket.
|
| I don't think this analogy works very well here. What if the
| alternative is that the potential buyer would just never have
| purchased the product in the first place? Then there is
| simply no exchange that would have occurred, and the seller's
| "money in their pocket" was never going to be any different
| in this case.
|
| To think about this analogy some more...Is it theft if one
| walks into a store, sees something interesting that they
| remember for their own benefit later, but they choose not to
| make any purchases? Does that deprive the shopowner of income
| in some way that the potential buyer should be made
| responsible for?
|
| This isn't to argue that copying software (or music, or
| movies, and so on) is universally good or bad here, just that
| the theft analogy really has some serious problems with it.
| prirun wrote:
| Potential buyers are not just in the "I will pay for it" /
| "I won't pay for it" categories. There is a middle who
| would be willing to pay for it, but if they can get it for
| free, will do that.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >That's because books were hand-made items,
|
| The printing press was over 200 years old in 1700, like 99%
| of the nearly a billion books in Western Europe were printed.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Quick counter point re music software.
|
| I pirated Ableton Live until v5. I've paid for the full suite
| every release after that. If I hadn't pirated it, I wouldn't
| be paying for it now. This is pretty much ubiquitous in
| Ableton users, and I'm pretty sure that it applies to many
| other high end software packages. Photoshop would probably be
| the best example, but Office, Autocad and many others would
| have a similar customer base.
| monetus wrote:
| I've seen thousands funneled to ableton this way.
| ashwagary wrote:
| Very little of this existed before the 1700s because all the
| science and math knowledge was still being stolen from the
| rest of the world using the racist "Doctrine of Christian
| Discovery".
|
| Patents granted to Asians, Africans, and indigenous Americans
| for prior-art would bankrupt Europe.
|
| Remember, before the 15th century less than 5 people could do
| long division in Europe. Try solving middle/high school math
| equations without the number 0 and using only roman numerals,
| you will understand the problem very quickly. For this and
| many other reasons, most of the intellectual heavy lifting
| was done outside of Europe. It took 400 years or so to
| collect information and catch up to the rest of the world.
| Jiro wrote:
| >Patents granted to Asians, Africans, and indigenous
| Americans for prior-art would bankrupt Europe.
|
| Patents last 20 years. So no.
| ashwagary wrote:
| >Patents granted to Asians, Africans, and indigenous
| Americans for prior-art would bankrupt Europe.
|
| >Patents last 20 years. So no.
|
| That's a domestic choice that most countries had no say
| in, there is no global consensus on how long patents
| should last.
|
| In the US, congress has the right to grant and extend
| patents for however long it wishes (and has done so many
| times in the past).
|
| So yes, to my original point.
| hhjinks wrote:
| > someone very literally ends up with less money in their
| pocket
|
| If I pirate something, how do I _very literally_ take money
| out of the pocket of the creator?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| This is a fine example of the abuse of the word
| "literally". People excuse the abuse, saying that it also
| means something like "emphatically"; but in this case, it's
| clear why this abuse results in errors.
|
| As far as "theft" is concerned: software, including
| recorded music and films, has zero marginal cost of
| production. The software industries therefore have the
| potential to generate extreme profits, unrelated to the
| risks and costs of development. Intellectual Property laws
| are needed to protect these extreme profits.
|
| Incidentally, I'm not aware that the term "Intellectual
| Property" was in use before about 1985. Copyright
| infringement, in particular, wasn't a crime before about
| that date; enforcement was by civil suit, and if you didn't
| make any money from infringement, then the court's award
| couldn't be greater than zero.
| blihp wrote:
| While the 'Intellectual Property' terminology probably
| did start in the 1980's alongside personal computers, the
| concerns about wide scale infringement definitely existed
| prior to that via Xerox (i.e. copy) machines (paper),
| audio tape/cassettes (sound) and VCRs (video) which made
| widespread consumer duplication trivial. This was all a
| thing before 1980, it just exploded as the technology
| reached the masses in the 80's.
|
| Copyright infringement was most definitely a thing before
| then and damages could be awarded even if you had no
| income from it. See statutory damages. Really the only
| thing that changed with computers was the ability to make
| perfect copies, thanks to the data being digital. Prior
| to that, the problem was somewhat mitigated by the analog
| nature of it and that by the time you got to the 3rd or
| 4th generation copy the quality had significantly
| degraded.
| d23 wrote:
| I you want to get really pedantic with the use of
| "literally": you're misquoting him. He didn't say you're
| literally "taking" the money out of their pocket; he said
| they literally have less in their pocket. I guess we could
| argue most people don't use cash these days so it's not
| literally in their pocket, but that's a level of pedantry I
| don't think is really valuable in a public forum.
| samatman wrote:
| The strongest adverb I would support in that sentence is
| "hypothetically". "literally" is risible, and not because
| the poster meant "figuratively".
| blagie wrote:
| There are many things one can do which lead you to have less
| profit.
|
| One can run false advertisements, hire mercenaries to attack
| your factories, dump below-price goods on the market (and
| jack up prices once you're out-of-business), sign exclusive
| anti-competitive deals with your suppliers, vandalize your
| employee's homes so none want to work for you, and so on.
|
| No one would argue that any of those are ethical, but none of
| those are theft.
|
| Confusing words like this is a standard tactic, but it's not
| conducive to having reasoned discourse.
|
| It's also not conducive to attack a straw man. You put a lot
| of words in my mouth. I said we shouldn't impose Western IP
| regimes on other nations. You somehow changed this to music
| piracy in the west. There's no logical connection there
| either.
|
| As a footnote, on the topic of piracy in the west: when I was
| in college, there was a lot of copyright infringement. None
| of those kids had money to buy what they were pirating. A
| couple of decades later, no one I knew from college infringes
| on copyrights. The lost profits were zero. Indeed, in some
| cases, people bought software they pirated in college because
| by that point, they were used to it. It's in discussing
| scenarios like that when the analogy to theft breaks down.
| The tools for addressing it are different. As a matter of
| policy, it makes the most sense to target places where there
| is the most capacity for losing profit. One example of an IP
| regime which I thought was clever -- from an Eastern European
| country shortly after the fall of communism -- only
| criminalized copyright infringement for non-minors. If I
| child wanted to copy a $5000 CAD program or a $200 IDE to
| learn to use it, it was legal. Copyright enforcement started
| once kids hit 17 (and was enforced). The West forced the
| country to shut down that "loophole," but it seemed like a
| reasonable policy to me.
| ls65536 wrote:
| > Indeed, in some cases, people bought software they
| pirated in college because by that point, they were used to
| it.
|
| This reminds me of some old reasoning for why many software
| vendors would often tacitly go easy on those copying their
| software, as it was often seen as a wide pipe to eventual
| revenue down the road. Rather than letting those
| (potential) eventual customers go to the competition early
| on (often much less expensive to purchase, or perhaps even
| "free"), they would get comfortable with the proprietary
| features of a certain piece of software and be "locked in"
| that way. Of course, this practice would be unlikely to
| ever be officially acknowledged by the software vendor(s),
| but the people who understood this made "business sense"
| knew what they were doing.
| blagie wrote:
| Some of this was pretty explicit and pretty well
| documented. In the late nineties, Microsoft strategically
| encouraged piracy in many developing countries, to
| develop lock-in. This wasn't just comfort; once a country
| has infrastructure built around Windows, from scripts, to
| data formats, to workforce skills, to everything else,
| it's almost impossible to switch off. At the time, the
| plan was to crack down once countries developed a little
| bit and could afford to pay.
|
| Indeed, many years later, Microsoft then cracked down on
| piracy when countries reached middle income. I'm not
| familiar with Microsoft to know if that was intentional
| follow-though on the original strategy, or coincidental.
| By the time the crackdown happened, Microsoft was a very
| different (and much less strategic) company with
| different people. In either case, they came out way ahead
| for it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > Speaking at University of Washington, Bill Gates said:
| "Although 3 million computers get sold each year in
| China, people don't pay for our software. Someday they
| will, though, and as long as they are going to steal it,
| we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted,
| and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime
| in the next decade."
| analog31 wrote:
| Not just vendor lock but also stifling competition by
| letting the "free" version set a price ceiling for
| alternatives.
| galactus wrote:
| There's no natural right to artificially ban copying
| something.
| virtualritz wrote:
| > Of course it's analogous to theft, because someone very
| literally ends up with less money in their pocket
|
| Err, nope. If I steal a bicycle from the shop around the
| corner there is one less bicycle the owner can sell.
|
| If I copy a digital asset the loss is hypothetical. It only
| exists if the condition holds true that I would have
| purchased the item if I hadn't been able to just copy it.
|
| This condition is simply not true in the majority of cases of
| piracy of digital items.
|
| I worked in third world countries, I have a friend who is a
| single mother on a low wage job.
|
| These are just /some/ examples where a sale of many digital
| items, software, media, etc. would provably not happen. There
| is no 'theft' because there was no income withheld from the
| creator. [1]
|
| Proof: https://www.techdirt.com/2017/09/21/eu-buried-
| own-400000-stu...
|
| [1] Whether they should be allowed to do that is a different
| matter - one detached from theft/economy. It's a
| philosophical/ethical issue and I agree with parent that the
| view we hold on these things is recent and shaped by
| conditions that frequently no longer apply (physical item vs
| digital one resp. cost of making a copy).
| karaterobot wrote:
| > If I copy a digital asset the loss is hypothetical. It
| only exists if the condition holds true that I would have
| purchased the item if I hadn't been able to just copy it.
|
| This argument never held up. By taking it, you admit it has
| value to you. Whether or not you agree with the asking
| price is incidental: you have to acknowledge you are taking
| something with some value and not paying for it.
|
| I've pirated my fair share of software and media, and had
| my own software pirated. I'm not judging anybody for
| pirating software, but I am calling out specious self-
| justifications about doing so. You pirate it because it's
| cheaper and easier than paying for it.
| marssaxman wrote:
| If I copy a digital object, I'm not _taking_ anything at
| all: I 'm _making_ a brand new instance, identical to the
| original. I pay for the computer hardware and electrical
| power necessary to make the copy, and for the storage
| space it lives in.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Sure, but that's semantics. You are acquiring a thing
| which has value to you, and has value to its owner, and
| which the owner has asked you to pay for. You can't
| pretend the thing you have acquired is without value if
| you wanted it. Piracy is really about "do I want to pay,
| and can you stop me from getting it without paying?" and
| this business about "I'm not really stealing because it's
| digital and the marginal cost of production is zero" is
| just self-justification.
| wtetzner wrote:
| > Sure, but that's semantics.
|
| I hate it when people say that to dismiss things.
| Semantics is all about _meaning_. Without it we can 't
| have a discussion. It's what's important about the words
| we say.
|
| > You are acquiring a thing which has value to you, and
| has value to its owner, and which the owner has asked you
| to pay for.
|
| Right, which means it had enough value for you to copy
| it, but says nothing about whether or not it was valuable
| enough to pay money for it. And if it wasn't valuable
| enough to pay money for it, the author loses nothing in
| that particular instance of piracy.
|
| Of course, that doesn't mean all piracy falls under this
| case, but it does seem important to distinguish between
| these things.
| drdeca wrote:
| I'm mostly not in favor of software or media piracy
| (though if it has been sufficiently long (not sure how
| long) since it has been commercially available, or a
| handful of other cases that don't come to mind right now,
| I think probably fine), but I do think it makes sense to
| distinguish it from theft, and indeed, distinguish it on
| the basis that you are not depriving the person of a
| thing which they have.
|
| If Joe is selling cherries he grew on his cherry tree,
| and I start selling some cherries from my cherry tree for
| cheaper (or just giving away cherries), this does deprive
| Joe from some of the profit he would get from selling his
| cherries, because some people who would have bought some
| cherries from Joe instead of from me, but I am by no
| means stealing profits from Joe. I'm not taking his
| cherries. He still has his cherries. That's not to say
| that he isn't worse off. He is, of course, worse off. But
| (except if some other conditions hold) I haven't wronged
| him, and I certainly haven't stolen from him.
|
| (Ftr, I don't actually have a cherry tree, and do not
| grow any food.)
|
| Now, if Joe is selling copies of a file, and I am giving
| away copies of the same file, well, it seems like a
| similar situation. One difference is that in the case of
| the cherry tree, both Joe and I are putting in the work
| to create the product, namely, by raising and maintaining
| our respective cherry trees, and harvesting the cherries,
|
| while in the case of the computer file, it may be that
| Joe put in a lot of work into creating that file in the
| first place, and I did not, and so if I were to sell
| copies of the file, that would seem _quite_ questionable.
|
| Now, if I were to distribute the file Joe made and is
| selling, the reason this would be bad is probably a
| combination of "This makes Joe worse off, and he should
| be rewarded for the benefit he provided others, and also
| society decided on that basis that I shouldn't do that,
| and unless there is an overriding moral obligation to do
| otherwise, I morally ought to follow the ethical rules
| that society has established."
|
| This is, I'll admit, _somewhat_ similar to at least some
| of the reason it would be bad for me to steal some of Joe
| 's cherries and give them away (though with less of the
| reason being "because of the ethics society decided" part
| than in the case with distributing the file.)
|
| Though, one difference in this case is, Joe could do
| other things with the cherries other than sell them, and
| by stealing them, I am depriving him also of that option.
| This doesn't happen in the case of distributing the file.
| Nor would it happen if I had a magical duplication beam
| which I used to make duplicates of his cherries.
|
| I think this difference is an important part of the
| concept of theft.
|
| The concept of theft, I expect, arose substantially
| before money, and I imagine also before significant
| trade.
|
| The concept of "Hey, that's mine! I need that!" is fairly
| basic, and is based on "If another person takes it from
| you, you don't have it anymore." .
|
| Now, of course, socially we could agree to use the word
| "theft" to also include software/media piracy, but I
| personally don't think we should. I think it is best to
| use different words for them, because I think it makes
| sense to keep the concepts separate (though related).
| M277 wrote:
| It's not that simple; there are places where your asset
| has value for a user but the user _cannot_ (and I
| _really_ mean cannot here) pay that value.
|
| It's not a matter of convenience, and it's not just
| because it's cheaper either -- piracy is the only way to
| actually get access to it for some people. Otherwise,
| it's just prohibitively expensive for them.
|
| Sure, you could argue that that still falls under
| "because it's cheaper", but there's a difference between
| someone pirating because they just want to save money and
| someone pirating because they literally can't afford to
| get it legally no matter what.
|
| And this doesn't cover stuff like software just being
| plain unavailable in some regions; I literally cannot get
| some software I use in university legally.
| otterley wrote:
| Property is about the boundaries of what one can control,
| not about physical stuff and land. What makes property
| property is not physical boundaries and the tangible nature
| of a thing, but the fact that you can control who gets to
| use what you possess and under what conditions, backed by
| the power of the state. In states with copyright laws, this
| applies equally to land and widgets as it does things you
| write.
|
| Property being about land and geographical boundaries is
| one of the most common misconceptions that gets shattered
| in the first few weeks of a first-year course on the
| subject in law school.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Yeah, I think you're kinda hitting the nail on the head
| here. The idea that people should be allowed to control
| ideas or concepts is wrong. We need to move past this as
| a species, so much of what is relevant to the day to day
| lives of people on this planet exists in a world where
| scarcity is artificial. That's not okay. Artificial
| scarcity is not something we should allow.
| otterley wrote:
| Copyright law does not protect abstract ideas or
| concepts. It protects specific artistic expressions of
| them. See https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf;
| there's also a whole body of law around this.
|
| > Artificial scarcity is not something we should allow.
|
| Unfortunately, unless we're all going back to a society
| in which people can only produce things that are
| physically scarce, like food, we need artificial scarcity
| so that people can produce things that are valuable but
| not physically scarce so that they can buy those things
| that actually are scarce.
| blurker wrote:
| You're making a huge logical leap assuming that
| artificial scarcity is the only reason that we produce
| non-physical goods, and that's easily contradicted by the
| existence of FOSS. There are plenty of creators who
| create things for all sorts of reasons besides profit.
| And in many cases, there are people who want to create
| free things and can't because of things like patents and
| IP trolls preventing them from doing it.
| [deleted]
| otterley wrote:
| > that artificial scarcity is the _only_ reason that we
| produce non-physical goods
|
| (Emphasis mine.) Who said that? Certainly not me.
|
| Acts of charity happen all the time, and we are doubtless
| better off for them. But those are a choice. It doesn't
| mean it should be the only choice.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| > Of course it's analogous to theft, because someone very
| literally ends up with less money in their pocket.
|
| Do they really end up with less money if the person wouldn't
| purchase it otherwise? A realistic example I've lived, is
| that purchasing the software/movie or whatever copyrighted
| material is impossible due to its unavailability in the local
| market, the absence of payment methods to purchase it online
| and/or the heavy cost compared to the cost of living in most
| parts of the world.
| zucker42 wrote:
| > Of course it's analogous to theft, because someone very
| literally ends up with less money in their pocket.
|
| When I repair an iPhone instead of buying a new one, Apple
| ends up with less money in their pocket. Repairing an iPhone
| clearly isn't theft, so this argument is clearly fallacious.
| scns wrote:
| "In music equipment your customers are always broke" Bob Moog
| IIRC
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Books were hand-made items, but machines and production
| techniques were copied a lot too, and also knowledge of eg.
| medicine.
|
| Patenting a "ground flower X and leaves of plant Y in alcohol
| with sugar added" was not a thing back then.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Back in those days, medicine recipe are held as secret.
|
| Recipe as secret is not compatible with modern standards
| like peer-review / FDA approval, etc ...
| Shoue wrote:
| If the creation is the part that matters why would they want
| to keep selling instead of taking a page out of indie game
| dev collectives or open source projects like Godot and
| Blender who earn salaries through Patreon-like monetisation
| strategies? Then piracy basically becomes a non-issue because
| it's the labour that matters, not paying for an artificially
| scarce digital copy. This seems like a pretty easy "best of
| both worlds" approach, no?
| mminer237 wrote:
| It is _way_ easier to get funding through licensing fees
| than non-deductible donations.
| pkulak wrote:
| The point is that I pay hundreds of dollars for JetBrains and
| Russian citizens return the favor for stuff that I write.
| That's what we've agreed on as two countries. Agreements aren't
| a new construct.
| thaway2839 wrote:
| You can choose not to have "Western values" imposed on you.
|
| Don't use the products whose creators' values you don't agree
| with.
|
| It's even easier in software with its widespread and thriving
| open source ecosystem.
|
| Yet you don't seem to promote that. Instead, you seem to
| promote the idea that people who want stuff should be able to
| impose THEIR values on the creators of that stuff.
| [deleted]
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If a creator doesn't want their creation used by people who
| they don't agree with, dont make or share the thing. It's
| really that simple. What we have instead is creators
| appropriating the legal system to enforce their wishes. It
| doesn't take a genius to see the negative ramifications of
| that level of overreach.
| OJFord wrote:
| If I don't want my car used by people who (have values
| including the right to ~steal~ use others' cars) I don't
| agree with, should I not have a car?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I don't conflate personal property with intellectual
| property so this reasoning falls flat for me and doesn't
| appear to be contradictory. I can see how it would appear
| contradictory to people who do see personal and
| intellectual property as the same thing. I challenge
| these people to examine the experiences that led them to
| make this choice and which experiences would have led
| them to choosing differently.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _I challenge these people to examine the experiences
| that led them to make this choice_
|
| If you make a coffee table out of wood from a sustainable
| forest, does it belong to you? What causes it to become
| personal property?
|
| If you make a coffee table out of code from a second life
| engine, does it belong to you? What causes it to _not_ be
| personal property?
|
| What if the coffee table you make in VR is made from
| "wood" tokenized on a blockchain that cost money to
| generate the electrons for?
|
| Your examination concludes that things made from your
| invention and/or labor rendered in atoms are property,
| but from your invention and/or labor rendered in
| electrons are not? Or one form of labor has a right to
| earn a living, the other does not?
|
| Until we achieve a post-scarcity world -- where life-time
| is included in scarcity -- that thinking seems both
| wishful and facile.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| These are all excellent epistemological questions.
|
| > What causes it to not be personal property?
|
| My baseline is that things are not property, so
| justifying the absence of property is a foreign concept
| to me. I'm curious why people would tend toward assuming
| property and then rationalizing away property in certain
| contexts. The assumption of property has consequences so
| enormous that I cannot authentically assume it as my
| default. Again, really interested to hear what made
| people chose that as their default.
| jcranberry wrote:
| Title should be Russia to legalize software piracy of countries
| supporting sanctions.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| Usually moderators are quick to change titles here to more
| accurate ones, especially in sensitive topics like this. I
| wonder why this one hasn't been changed.
| [deleted]
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I expect we'll start to see software that will include code that
| detects Russian character sets, Russian timezones, Russian
| internet addresses and will refuse to work if unlicenced. Most
| likely they'll be able to bypass those but a significant majority
| won't be able to pirate due to lack of technical knowledge.
| piokoch wrote:
| In the times when a lot of software is sold as SaaS, it might be
| exactly the same bright idea as invading Ukraine and murdering
| civilians.
| [deleted]
| Hamuko wrote:
| Well, you get pirated Windows and Office, which is probably all
| that your average Russian business needs.
| dijit wrote:
| Devils advocate: if the majority of business software is sold
| from the US and the US is refusing to sell software to Russia,
| what choice is there?
|
| I'm sure the Russian government are using Microsoft Office, if
| they can't legally buy it anymore then they must make the piracy
| of it legal: or they're breaking their own laws.
|
| Or they retrain on open/libreoffice. But that unfortunately has a
| poor track record of working.
|
| As staunch of a FOSS advocate as I am, this is probably the
| sensible move for now. :/
| some_random wrote:
| Simply don't inflict actions on others so severe the global
| community cuts you off?
| phoe-krk wrote:
| _> Devils advocate: if the majority of business software is
| sold from the US and the US is refusing to sell software to
| Russia, what choice is there?_
|
| "Leave Ukraine and pay for the war crimes committed there" is
| an obvious choice that comes to my mind.
| leshenka wrote:
| I've never been to ukraine, I didn't commit any war crimes
| there, honestly!
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| list countries that have paid for war crimes when not forced
| to do so.
|
| an unrealistic choice is not a choice.
| dijit wrote:
| Well. Which one of these options is least bad then?
|
| I don't think the US would leave Iraq because they couldn't
| buy IP licensing. They'd probably say that the IP licensing
| is invalid and do it anyway.
|
| Anyway. Obviously I want this invasion to end, but obviously
| they don't. So, this move makes sense given that context.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > Well. Which one of these options is least bad then?
|
| Since you didn't specify bad _for who_ (but really, even if
| you did) still this:
|
| > "Leave Ukraine and pay for the war crimes committed
| there"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Well, I mean if you said "least bad for Vladimir Putin",
| I think that is less clear.
| grey-area wrote:
| Leaving Ukraine is least bad for Russia, the pain from
| sanctions has only just started, they are facing economic
| collapse, and this move won't save them.
| blackoil wrote:
| I am curious about these statements. Europe, China and
| India are still buying oil and gas from Russia. They can
| still import from China/India. Why would the economy
| collapse?
| varjag wrote:
| Europe diversifies from Russia as we speak, and China was
| already buying Russian hydrocarbons at or below cost.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| So many reasons. Fossil fuels are half of their economy
| at best. As a single market, China doesn't pay them much
| per barrel. Their oil production per barrel is expensive.
| Their drilling industry uses Western tech and resources,
| including Western technicians. I have a difficult time
| imagining any country doing well with their imports and
| exports reduced by 50-60%.
|
| oec.com has lots of info per country on what makes up
| their economy.
| ilyich wrote:
| Europe and the USA simply have no alternative to Russian
| oil and natural gas. They may have in 20 or 30 years from
| now if they start investing in it several billion dollars
| per year right now. That's why gas prices in Europe and
| oil prices in the USA are skyrocketing these days.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Europe and the USA simply have no alternative to
| Russian oil and natural gas.
|
| Russian oil is already going unsold, without formal
| sanctions.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Americans think denying people Iphones is a great
| punishment. In reality Russians will save a lot of money
| buying Oppo and Vivo phones from China that function just
| as well for 99% of users.
|
| They will use Linux, build their own alternatives for
| Google/Youtube or use Chinese sites. It will all be fine.
| In fact their data will be safe from Google and Meta.
| grey-area wrote:
| Their entire supply chain from cars to planes to military
| goods to computers and software relies on the west. Their
| best people have already left and more will leave soon.
|
| In some sense they could survive on a war footing (i.e.
| people won't starve) but their economy will take decades
| to recover even if sanctions are lifted soon. They lost
| 25% of their wealth in a few days (rubble) and don't even
| have a functioning stock market.
|
| This is already a catastrophe for Russia.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The Russian government sadly already thought of that.
| They have already set up parallel supply chains for their
| planes, military goods, cars, softwares and computers.
| For planes, it's through domestic industry being kept
| isolated for military reasons. For military goods, it is
| all made in CIS countries and use no foreign (except
| maybe Chinese? Not sure) critical components. For cars,
| they have begun to import Chinese cars already. For
| software, piracy solves the issue. For computers, they
| have domestic low performance processors with already
| functional x86 emulation, as well as the option to buy
| Chinese chips.
| fer wrote:
| Most of their civilian planes are Boeing and Airbus, then
| much further down in numbers Tupolev et al. While there
| had been efforts to revive civilian aircraft industry,
| the only recent model is the Sukhoi Superjet 100, which
| is relatively small and limited to regional flights.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right. The main trouble with planes is how advanced
| avionics and engines have become. That, and whoever
| you're flying to needs to certify the aircraft; China
| started the 737Max grounding, they're no aviation
| regulatory paper tiger.
|
| All Russia has the domestic capability for is going back
| to long range four engine planes, which will increase
| maintenance and fuel consumption.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It is not absolutely necessary to use Russian-owned
| planes for civilian aviation. Foreign airlines (Chinese,
| Indian, etc...) can take over the routes.
|
| It is only necessarily for regional flights.
| grey-area wrote:
| Let's see how well they do; judging by their war
| planning, it won't go as well as you expect.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Oh don't think I am under the illusion it will go
| perfectly, I think it will have grave disasters. I just
| don't think it will have a significant impact on their
| warmaking ability, and that eventually they will mostly
| recover.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Their entire supply chain from cars to planes to
| military goods to computers and software relies on the
| west.
|
| _Explainer-Importance of Russian Titanium to Global
| Industry_
|
| https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2022-03-
| 01/...
| grey-area wrote:
| Sure it is absolutely going to be difficult for the west
| as well, but not catastrophic.
| acdha wrote:
| Europe is planning to sharply reduce their oil & gas
| imports so this can't continue to be used as a lever
| against them. Every EV, every electrified house, etc.
| lowers demand for Russian petroleum. Similarly, they have
| a lot of other exports and as each of those is replaced
| by purchases elsewhere they'll have to work harder to re-
| enter the markets after hostilities end. There are also
| some big challenges for certain sectors: for example,
| after watching the current massive under-performance, how
| many places are going to be jumping at a chance to buy
| their weapons systems?
|
| Also, remember that while China and India can choose to
| continue receiving exports they didn't pay as much as
| Europe did _before_ the war. If Russia has reduced itself
| to one or two potential buyers, those buyers have the
| power to dictate pricing well under market and the
| financing options are going to be very much not in
| Russia's long-term interests. China has a strategy
| they've used on smaller countries where they offer
| aggressive loans for projects and then take control of
| infrastructure / resources if the borrower defaults, and
| I'd be exceedingly unsurprised if some Chinese companies
| end up doing something similar here.
| vkou wrote:
| Because you can't just shift all of your supply chains to
| cut off all dependence on imports from Europe overnight.
|
| In the long term, Russia can survive by selling gas to
| Europe, and buying goods from China. In the short term,
| there's an absolute madhouse in the domestic markets.
|
| Unlike in the Soviet days, when most of its domestic
| products were locally produced, Russia has de-
| industrialized, and all of its supply chains have become
| incredibly dependant on the West. It can't turn back the
| clock 40 years overnight.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Aside from the economic disruption everyone else has
| mentioned, there's also the incredibly expensive war they
| are currently engaged in. Income is plummeting while
| expenses are going through the roof.
| bbarnett wrote:
| codedokode wrote:
| But I think that Russian and US military policy sometimes
| is similar. Let's take Syria as an example. Syria had
| good relations with Russia and as a trustworthy and
| reliable ally allowed to build a Russian base there. I
| guess that US didn't like the idea of having a foreign
| military base in the Middle East so they supported the
| opposition trying to overthrow the government. And Russia
| didn't like the idea of losing a base and a good ally so
| they supported the government.
|
| Am I wrong here? It looks like nobody really cared about
| Syrian people and that's what's similar in US and Russia
| foreign policy. Wars are usually waged for land or for
| power, not to protect someone's liberties.
|
| You are right though that America recently didn't annex
| land; but they did so earlier, see history of Panama
| Canal Zone for example [1]:
|
| > In March 1902 Colombia set its terms for such a treaty:
| Colombia was to be sovereign over the canal, which would
| be policed by Colombians paid for by the United States.
| The host nation would receive a larger percentage of the
| tolls than provided for in earlier draft treaties.
|
| > The draft terms were quickly rejected by American
| officials.
|
| > A Frenchman who had worked on his nation's canal
| efforts, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, represented Panamanian
| insurgents; he met with Roosevelt and with Secretary of
| State John Hay, who saw to it that his principals
| received covert support. When the revolution came in
| November 1903, the United States intervened to protect
| the rebels, who succeeded in taking over the province,
| declaring it independent as the Republic of Panama.
|
| > negotiated a treaty, giving the United States a zone 20
| miles (32 km) wide and full authority to pass laws to
| govern that zone.
|
| The same trick that US, USSR and Russia have repeated
| multiple times since: support the opposition against the
| government; get something valuable (like land or
| permission to build military bases) in return. Repeat if
| the opposition you have helped stops being grateful.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_Zone
| acdha wrote:
| > But I think that Russian and US military policy
| sometimes is similar. Let's take Syria as an example.
| Syria had good relations with Russia and as a trustworthy
| and reliable ally allowed to build a Russian base there.
| I guess that US didn't like the idea of having a foreign
| military base in the Middle East so they supported the
| opposition trying to overthrow the government. And Russia
| didn't like the idea of losing a base and a good ally so
| they supported the government. > Am I wrong here? It
| looks like nobody really cared about Syrian people and
| that's what's similar in US and Russia foreign policy.
| Wars are usually waged for land or for power, not to
| protect someone's liberties.
|
| It's a bit more complicated than just "nobody really
| cared" -- the U.S. was already bogged down in two wars of
| choice with no end in sight so a third one was going to
| be a very hard sell. The U.S. did provide aid to some
| groups and actively attacked ISIL but the latter was the
| primary combat goal because there was no interest in
| occupying Syria and accepting the massive requirements in
| personnel and casualties that would require.
|
| That's one of the key differences with the current
| situation in the Ukraine: Russia has made it clear that
| their goal is to rebuild the historic empire and are
| willing to accept large death counts to do so.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Oh so two things are not EXACTLY IDENTICAL and therefore
| we can't talk about the massive overlap between the two
| things? That 'whataboutism' culture that has formed on
| Reddit is so debate stifling its egregious that it hasn't
| been stomped out.
| ericmay wrote:
| azangru wrote:
| > and even if the situations were exactly the same, that
| still doesn't justify Russia invading Ukraine
|
| I would take issue with the word justify.
|
| That country A did something bad to country B doesn't
| justify country C doing the same bad thing to country D.
| But what it does do is puts the actions of country C in
| historical perspective (i.e. is it uniquely evil), and
| calls into question the moral argument advanced by
| country A (if it claims that what country C does to
| country D is wrong, then how come it did the same to
| country B? where was the moral argument then?).
|
| When we see someone say one thing and do another, we call
| such person a hypocrite. This person might object that by
| calling him so, we engage in a whataboutism, because his
| actions have no bearing on whether what he says is the
| right thing to do. But such objection typically doesn't
| work. I wonder why.
| maydup-nem wrote:
| > Russia invading Ukraine is unacceptable.
|
| To whom? certainly is acceptable to Russia and those who
| support it.
|
| > still doesn't justify
|
| Doesn't justify to who? Well, what is the justification
| of installing 2014 US puppet government? Was that
| justified, or was that just OK, by your standards? What
| does that word even mean? See, people who actually
| researched the topic understand there's plenty of reasons
| behind this war, and it certainly didn't come out of the
| blue.
|
| > Soviet Union
|
| Russia != Soviet Union.
|
| > It's not "debate stifling", it's recognition of an
| error in debate.
|
| Whataboutism is an attempt to call out the blatant double
| standards.
|
| Eh, NPCs are gonna be NPCs. Don't ever change, OK?
| torstenvl wrote:
| There was no 2014 puppet government. The U.S. frankly did
| not much care about Ukraine in 2014.
|
| Any suggestion that Ukraine is not making its own choice
| to be a liberal democracy, even despite the Orange
| Revolution, even despite 2014, even despite the fierce
| defensive fighting going on _as we speak_ , is an effort
| to deny an entire people agency. It is racist.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| You are correct. The US and Russia are not really
| comparable. The US has caused more suffering through its
| foreign policy than Russia since 1991. It plays in a
| league of its own.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The word you're looking for is "annex". The US wanted to
| occupy Iraq until a puppet government could stand on its
| own. This is strictly identical to Russian goals in
| Ukraine. Neither want to annex, they want to occupy until
| a self-sustaining puppet government can be installed.
| riku_iki wrote:
| They now want Ukraine to recognize Crimea as legally
| annexed, and two additional regions as independent states
| (likely will join Russia after that).
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Crimea is already annexed, and LPR/DPR are already de-
| facto independent. That is the aftermath of the 2014
| events. It is necessary for Ukraine to recognize these
| losses if there is to be some kind of peace, since it's
| not possible for them to gain it back.
|
| That's why the current invadion is moreso akin to the
| Iraq war. The invadion in 2014 can be analogised to other
| conflicts, if you want.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > That's why the current invadion is moreso akin to the
| Iraq war.
|
| The topic of discussion is that it is not:
|
| - Russia has clear intent to annex territory
|
| - US never had such intent from early 20 century: they
| left Iraq when they were asked to: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_tr...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The US did not leave Iraq when they were asked to. They
| simply called a few thousand of them "defence
| contractors" instead, and promptly returned them all in
| 2014.
|
| Russia has _already_ annexed territory.
|
| By the way, the US is still occupying territory to this
| day in Cuba, so clearly the intent remains.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > They simply called them "defence contractors" instead,
| and promptly returned them all.
|
| "All" means 100k of initial invasion forces? Or few
| hundreds who provide security to commercial objects in
| Iraq?
|
| > Russia has already annexed territory.
|
| They occupied territory, it is not recognized by many
| countries as annexed. Now they want it to be recognized.
|
| It
| empressplay wrote:
| lol when Iraq's puppet government was asked by the US to
| ask them to leave you mean
| riku_iki wrote:
| I am under impression that current Iraq government is not
| puppet, and even more pro-Iran than pro-US.
| severino wrote:
| > These are not equal things. What Russia is doing is not
| related to how to US behaves. A war of permanent
| occupation, and oppression, under absolute rule, is not
| the same.
|
| How can we know what Russia is going to do in Ukraine?
| Did Putin tell you? For now, we can say they're the same.
| Not to mention all those countries supported financially,
| militarily... by the US, who apply an absolute rule of
| oppression to their citizens.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > How can we know what Russia is going to do in Ukraine?
| Did Putin tell you?
|
| Actually, Putin has given a few speeches on the topic. In
| the most recent one, I believe, he said that he wanted to
| annex Ukraine. After a previous speech in which he said
| that he doesn't believe Ukraine has any existence as an
| ethnic state, since Ukrainians are (to him) just
| Russians.
| severino wrote:
| Actually, it looks like the official statement points
| towards the opposite direction. You can read it here, no
| need to believe my words:
|
| https://www.trtworld.com/europe/lavrov-russia-s-goal-is-
| to-d...
| krzyk wrote:
| Well, is Ukraine run by a dictator? Nope
|
| So the comparison is false to begin with.
|
| Similarity would be if Iraq attacked Israel (a dictator
| attacks democracy).
| severino wrote:
| So, it is OK to invade a country, and cause losses among
| its civilians, if the president of that country does not
| qualify for the western definition of democracy?
|
| Also, both Chile or Guatemala were democracies when the
| US financed and organized the coups that deposed their
| elected presidents, just to put some friend dictator.
| krzyk wrote:
| > So, it is OK to invade a country, and cause losses
| among its civilians, if the president of that country
| does not qualify for the western definition of democracy?
|
| Yes, and any "definition of democracy" is questionable,
| either you have it or you don't. Do you think that Saddam
| was in any "definition" a democratic president?
|
| How about Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Stalin, Putin?
|
| > Also, both Chile or Guatemala were democracies when the
| US financed and organized the coups that deposed their
| elected presidents, just to put some friend dictator.
|
| That was wrong, what can I say? I don't pretend US is a
| good guy, it is more gray. But in that color definition
| Russia is black, or at least very dark gray.
|
| And no, I'm not US citizen.
| ttybird2 wrote:
| There were almost 200k civilian deaths in Iraq. Russia
| will have to try very hard to beat the US there. And
| don't forget, Iraq was not the only country that the US
| invaded.
|
| Yes, both countries are evil, but US is "number one".
|
| edit:
|
| _" A war of permanent occupation, and oppression, under
| absolute rule, is not the same. "_
|
| The US set up a puppet government, Putin will likely do
| the same.
| bbarnett wrote:
| * There were almost 200k civilian deaths in Iraq *
|
| The inference, in this context, is that the US directly
| slaughtered 200k civilians. This is pure deceit.
|
| Or are you suggesting the US lined up civilians and shot
| them?
|
| What you mean is, the US destabilized the region and then
| locals slaughtered each other, causing 200k deaths.
|
| A massive difference.
|
| The Middle East is a hotbed of conflicting religions, and
| tribalism runs rampant. Any "destabilization" caused
| deaths are impossible to separate from whatever next
| local conflict would have caused, regardless.
|
| Great false optics though.
| ttybird2 wrote:
| It seems that 13k civilians were killed directly by the
| US and its allies (around 300 for Russia at this moment).
| Although I do not see why the civilian deaths caused by
| the destabilization of the region should not be counted
| as I don't buy the "they would have died anyway" argument
| (and even if it was true it would not be a valid
| justification for not blaming the US for these specific
| deaths, if someone murders someone you won't just let
| them free because there were order people looking to kill
| said person). It was the US that was providing local
| militias with weapons after all.
|
| The middle east being a hotbed of conflicting religions
| is not an excuse. It just means that the US should have
| treated the region with a lot more care, you don't go
| around bombing nuclear reactors and then claim that it is
| their fault for exploding.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _It seems that 13k civilians were killed directly by the
| US and its allies_
|
| Wrong logic.
|
| First, one report claims this as a theory, where as the
| US believes 1300.
|
| Second, this was over 5 years, half a decade!
|
| Third, great care was taken to _not_ harm civilians.
|
| Fourth, this was the US and her allies, not the US alone.
| Some of her allies are locals.
|
| Further, this was a campaign against a violent group,
| Islamic State, invading, and slaughteting people
| relentlessly. Had the US and allies not stepped in, it is
| not hard to imagine IS killing even more, had their
| progress not been halted.
|
| This is just an absurd comparison. You are working so
| hard, and diligently, to present the US in the worst
| light possible. It is just silly.
| dang wrote:
| Please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN. It's not what
| this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ttybird2 wrote:
| Ah, there was a misunderstanding. I am talking about the
| 2003-2011 Iraq war. The ISIS thing is a direct result of
| the destabilization caused by the invasion. The 13k
| figure was for that invasion, I do not know how many
| civilians died by the hands of the US in the ISIS war,
| although the independent sources cited in wikipedia claim
| the deaths to be "8,317-13,190".
|
| _" Second, this was over 5 years, half a decade!"_
|
| And? The US has not really changed. Look at Yemen, Libya,
| etc.
|
| _" Third, great care was taken to not harm civilians."_
|
| You certainly can't see that great care in the
| "collateral murder" video. I am sure Russia will also
| talk about the great care that it took to not hurt
| civilians.
|
| _" Fourth, this was the US and her allies, not the US
| alone. Some of her allies are locals."_
|
| I don't think that this really changes anything. In
| addition Russia could claim the same about solders from
| Chechnya, Belarus, Crimea, etc.
|
| _" You are working so hard, and diligently, to present
| the US in the worst light possible"_
|
| You are working so hard, and diligently, to justify the
| atrocities that the US committed.
| dang wrote:
| Please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN. It's not what
| this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| krzyk wrote:
| > It seems that 13k civilians were killed directly by the
| US and its allies (around 300 for Russia at this moment)
|
| According to UN, Russian actions costed 1207 civilians
| their life, not 300.
| ttybird2 wrote:
| That figure includes injuries, not only deaths.
| https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113372
| krzyk wrote:
| Yes, you are right, currently 407 deaths. (https://www.oh
| chr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...)
| fly_b0y wrote:
| https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians
| /ir...
|
| No war is right. That's it. No situation is black and
| white.. One could argue that Russia's invasion could've
| been avoided by simply talking while other places didnt
| even have a choice. Wars are politicians incompetence or
| simply not seeing others interests and points of view but
| their own. Remove yourself from countries try to look
| from a 3rd point of view and you will see. The only way
| to break this cycle... All these poor innocent lives in
| all these wars all of a sudden came to me as a result of
| what I see in my current age and I will be honest, I am
| more mad at humanity than ever... what we think we are vs
| what we actually are is so different and that should be
| opened up and taught in schools.
| salzig wrote:
| Sadly true. IMHO to only thing left, is removing russian
| translation from every downloadable software. Side effect,
| maybe more russian speaking/reading people learn english or
| another language (at least reading).
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Not gonna help, they'll go back to using unofficial
| translations. There were a lot of those back in the 90s
| when Western software companies ignored ex-Soviet markets
| because there wasn't any money to be made there.
|
| I've used a lot of them personally, especially games.
| Some of those translations were pretty good, and some
| were so bad they were actually hilarious, and have become
| a meme (like "wasted - potracheno" in GTA San Andreas)
| baud147258 wrote:
| > using unofficial translations
|
| I know one indie game whose Russian localization was done
| and distributed with the pirated version first, before
| being adopted by the dev and added to the official
| distribution. (of course since the guy is only doing
| gamedev as a hobby, his stance regarding piracy of his
| own games is quite relaxed)
| satellite2 wrote:
| The goal of sanctions is generally not to make anything
| impossible, just to make it painful and/or expensive.
| bigfudge wrote:
| This seems like an excellent idea. How easy would it be
| for, e.g. MS to implement. Are there any potential
| downsides?
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| A more likely outcome would be the development of Russian
| alternatives to that software. The pirate version would
| be patched binaries.
|
| Decades ago I patched binary Commodore 64 applications to
| have messages in Spanish, getting as far as patching
| programming environments like Logo and BASIC to have not
| just error messages but also the keywords translated.
|
| Even without source code it is somewhat doable, and
| modern applications often have localization mechanisms
| that remain in the compiled executable.
| risyachka wrote:
| The development of alternative takes many years. Sure
| they can make some half-baked trashy version. But it will
| reduce users productivity a lot for years to come.
| forty wrote:
| Better, introduce peace messages in the Russian
| translation, and reliable information about the war in
| Ukraine. This way the software will be banned in Russia,
| and everyone else speaking Russian can continue using the
| software without problems, which seems fairer ^^
| neverminder wrote:
| > Leave Ukraine and pay for the war crimes committed there
|
| This is what eventually will happen, but over Putin's dead
| body most likely. "Live by the sword, die by the sword", that
| kinda thing, etc. Everybody agrees that by starting this
| pointless war Putin has painted himself into a corner.
| w_t_payne wrote:
| And a cornered rat may bite.
| gambiting wrote:
| A cornered rat is still just a rat.
| ttybird2 wrote:
| I would be quite scared if I saw a rat holding thousands
| of nuclear warheads.
| glogla wrote:
| Who knows if they work. Russians aren't even able to
| maintain army supply trucks properly.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I wonder that too.
|
| It has been said that you should never draw your pistol
| unless you are going to shoot. I don't know if that's
| true; but I do think it's unwise to threaten violence
| unless you are quite sure you are prepared to carry
| through.
|
| I think Putin _is_ prepared to carry through (he 's made
| the threat more than once). Russia seems to be losing in
| Ukraine; but they can't be seen to be slinking away with
| their tail between their legs. So I think there's a good
| chance Russia will pop a tactical nuke in Ukraine.
|
| For the same reasons, NATO can't be seen to tolerate the
| popping of tactical nukes in a regional conflict; they
| would have to retaliate, for fear that their nuclear
| deterrent be treated as a joke. I haven't any idea how
| NATO might select their target, though; striking a city
| would be gross over-reaction, and striking Russians in
| Ukraine would be rather counterproductive.
| criddell wrote:
| 95% of them could be broken and it's still a scary
| thought.
| jamincan wrote:
| If he has thousands of nuclear warheads, he's not just a
| rat and he's not cornered.
|
| ie. there are still diplomatic ways out of this open to
| Putin. If he is not open to considering them and feels
| cornered, it is his own shortsightedness and failing.
| notpachet wrote:
| Hopefully it ends up being more akin to "live by the sword,
| die by the word".
| neverminder wrote:
| The West already tried to talk Putin to death. That
| didn't seem to work.
| hericium wrote:
| > Everybody agrees that by starting this pointless war
| Putin has painted himself into a corner.
|
| Not everybody. The "NATO pushed Putin into corner by
| inviting Ukraine" theorem is still alive. In any way,
| cornered Putin is angry Putin and angry Putin is dangerous
| and may be unpredictable.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| NATO was much more focused on China as a potential future
| enemy though. Until Putin put himself back on the map as
| an agressor most EU countries were spending as little on
| defense as they could get away with. I feel this is more
| of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
|
| No wonder China is gleefully standing by. They're just
| biding their time. When 2 dogs fight over a bone...
| sorenjan wrote:
| The idea that NATO's expansion east is what pushed Russia
| to invade Ukraine is frankly ridiculous. I can see how
| it's problematic for them, and they did bring it up
| before the invasion, but that was mainly more lies, the
| war had already been planned and decided months ago.
|
| Putin has said that Ukraine is a historical mistake, and
| laments the dissolution of the Soviet union. This war is
| because he want's to create a larger Russian empire, not
| a preemptive strike for self defense.
| acdha wrote:
| It's also catastrophically self-fulfilling: it's not like
| the eastern NATO members joined on a whim, they worked
| hard to make the case for it because they knew what
| living next to Russia meant and didn't want to be next.
| The war of conquest in Ukraine has done more to encourage
| continued NATO expansion than everything the older
| members have done in decades combined.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Exactly. The only reason NATO isn't in Ukraine and
| kicking the invaders out right now is because Ukraine
| isn't a NATO member. Meanwhile, NATO has been very clear
| about defending every inch of their member's territory.
| That's a very convincing argument for Russia's
| neighboring countries. I live in one of them, and I've
| been against a NATO membership until now, because I ruled
| out the possibility of war in Europe in my lifetime. I
| was wrong.
| acdha wrote:
| You had plenty of company in that mistaken assumption,
| sadly, and I'm afraid to ask how many other people will
| pay the price before it's over.
| krzyk wrote:
| Russia has a long history of "fast succession", if some
| military guy finds Putin behavior hurting to its
| business, Putin will suddenly catch covid and die.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I've heard that claim as well, but I don't know enough to
| judge it.
|
| Do you of a good source that covers the topic?
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| First 25 mins of
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbj1AR_aAcE is a good start
| NonEUCitizen wrote:
| A 2015 talk by John Mearsheimer from the University of
| Chicago discusses the "NATO pushed Putin into corner by
| inviting Ukraine" angle. Mearsheimer calls himself a
| "realist."
|
| https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4
| glogla wrote:
| More like Russian asset.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Mearsheimer completely ignores the agency of small
| European countries and makes the classic IR mistake of
| assuming that what might be 'rational' behaviour for a
| state in a Realist sense is also correct behaviour.
|
| You can use Realism to predict that Russia would
| eventually try to regain the power it lost over Eastern
| Europe and the Baltics with the dissolution of the USSR.
| In fact that very understanding and fear is precisely why
| countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics pushed so
| hard to join NATO and the EU, because they predicted that
| would happen.
|
| But that doesn't make Russia's actions the right move,
| either legally or morally. They have agency too and could
| always have made the choice to not to try to act like an
| empire with violent hegemony over their neighbours.
| sidibe wrote:
| These people believe that only the USA makes real
| decisions out of free will and everything else is only a
| consequence of those decisions or others uncontrollable
| reactions to those decisions. Apparently being an expert
| in geopolitics is mainly just about having a story and
| sticking to it through thick and thin.
| NonEUCitizen wrote:
| 1. I did not hear him equate realist with moral in that
| talk. Most people would consider the realist school to be
| amoral. (I advocate neither)
|
| 2. "NATO pushed..." does not imply Russia is right.
| Russia is wrong, legally and morally, but it can be
| simultaneously true that NATO pushed Russia.
| _djo_ wrote:
| 1. He has in other talks, and he has used it as a way to
| explain away Russia's actions. As though they're an actor
| with no agency that can only react.
|
| 2. "NATO pushed" is deceptive framing. The countries that
| joined NATO after 1991 had to lobby hard over many years
| to get NATO members to agree to expand. Even then the
| process took forever with MAPs and other interim steps
| each designed to slow the process down.
| ironcurtain wrote:
| Where were you for the last 8 years when the war crimes were
| committed in the East of Ukraine? West didn't talk about it,
| CNN wasn't putting up banner "We are Donbass" but bombing and
| shelling of the cities was happening nonetheless. Get of your
| high horse, it doesn't have legs to stand on.
| riku_iki wrote:
| I think cities from both sides of border were shelled: http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2015_Mariupol_rocket_a...
| AvesMerit wrote:
| Why does it matter where this person was 8 years ago?
| Undeniably, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a bad thing.
| Please be mindful to leave constructive comments that add
| to the conversation
| maydup-nem wrote:
| > Why does it matter where this person was 8 years ago?
|
| Not 8 years ago, but for the last 8 years. You know,
| being unaware of some pretty basic circumstances around
| an issue and then claiming undeniability is pretty rich
| of you.
|
| > constructive comments that add to the conversation
|
| How did your comment add to the conversation? You just
| repeated a common black/white sentiment and showed that
| you weren't fully informed about the topic. Please, be
| mindful next time.
| jotm wrote:
| Watched too much Russian news? I have no idea what was
| going on in DNR/LNR. The western stance was that Ukraine
| was combating separatists aided by the Russian government.
|
| The Russian narrative of "we're helping the newly
| recognized DNR/LNR" doesn't make much sense - why are they
| invading all of Ukraine to make those two regions safe?
|
| This is sort of like if the US "helped" Taiwan by taking
| Beijing. Or South Korea by capturing Pyongyang.
|
| Also, the Russian news keep saying "DNR/LNR forces _aided
| by Russian forces_ ". When it's clear it's just the Russian
| military.
| charles_f wrote:
| Although death by a thousand cuts is something, I doubt they
| would retire from Ukraine because Word now says "please
| activate". The cost of just pirating it is much lower than
| that of stopping the war
| Dah00n wrote:
| So Russia should follow US IP law but pay for warcrimes
| unlike the US? Why is it only when it is good for the west
| that other countries should follow the same rules?
| jansen555 wrote:
| Doesn't work this way. Might is right. You are talking
| emotionally. Ukraine is fighting this alone with not much
| military assistance. Why on earth Russia leaves and pay? Who
| is the law enforcer and judicial system ensuring that happen?
| Oh yeah whoever has the biggest gun AND willing to use it.
| Hey, that happens to be Russia too.
| krisoft wrote:
| That is a nice reasoning and you are right: Russia is able
| to commit atrocities.
|
| Where you go wrong is that the comment you were replying to
| was not talking about their ability but their options. The
| grand parent comment said: (paraphrasing) "Hey, what can
| Russia do, if no one licences them software?" To which the
| comment you responded said (again paraphrasing) "They have
| the option to stop the war".
|
| You are not disputing that Russia has the option to
| retreat, you are just talking about how they are strong and
| nobody can force them. Which might be true, might be false
| but certainly is a complete non sequitur in the context of
| this conversation.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for using HN primarily for
| political/ideological/nationalistic battle. We ban accounts
| that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or
| against, because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| jotm wrote:
| Let's hope "money makes might" is higher on the list than
| "might makes right" heh
| amcoastal wrote:
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly and egregiously
| breaking the site guidelines. You can't do that here,
| regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they
| are.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Edit: this is what I mean:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30586644
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30586240
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30553214
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552714
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30455525
|
| It's pretty shocking to see an account posting that
| abusively on a regular basis. Seriously not cool, and
| we'd already asked you to stop.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213678 (Nov 2021)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26905306 (April
| 2021)
| 8358373583 wrote:
| That's only a choice for Putin and his inner circle. The wast
| majority of Russian people have nothing to do with what the
| state is doing.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Any state ultimately derives its power from the people.
| There are countless examples of this, from peaceful
| protests to civil disobedience, violent revolutions and
| military coups.
|
| Or from a different perspective: if the opinion of the
| citizens doesn't matter, then why is Putin shutting down
| independent journalism and turning up the propaganda in his
| own country? That only makes sense if he cares what the
| public thinks.
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| The very fact that opposing media is being shut down,
| matters.
|
| Shutting down the media limits the average person's
| reason to know there is even a thing to protest against.
|
| It's not absolute power over the people, but it does
| diminish the power of the people.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| It's also an obvious sign to anyone with half a brain
| that the remaining state run media is full of lies.
| ben_w wrote:
| Harder to spot if you don't have an outside view. From
| inside, all you hear and see is that the media which was
| shut down were "evil propagandist" aligned with $ENEMY
| who wanted to harm $NATION by spreading lies about
| $POLITICAL_BUZZWORD.
| 8358373583 wrote:
| No a state derives its power from capacity for and
| willingness to use violence. The state is whatever group
| has the most of that in a given area. The population can
| obviously be a threat to a state, but it's ridiculous to
| expect people to risk their life to stop a state just
| because they happened to be born in its territory.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| The vast majority approve of putin regime.
| [deleted]
| satellite2 wrote:
| The vast majority has no trusted source to understand
| Putin's regime
| ModernMech wrote:
| Indeed hence why sanctions are so important. They act as
| a channel to tell them something is up with what their
| beloved leader is doing. The TV tells them their
| patriotic war is highly popular and well justified, yet
| they can't buy iPhones anymore. Well, maybe just maybe
| they will wake up. Because people are protesting and
| going to jail there, so it's not impossible to know
| what's going on. It just takes the willingness not to
| dismiss anything against Putin as "fake news".
| Koshkin wrote:
| As long as the stomach is full, there is nothing to
| understand.
| notpachet wrote:
| As long as the brain is full, there is nothing to eat!
| [deleted]
| walkhour wrote:
| It's amazing how many people ignore this, pretending only
| a lonely lunatic thinks this is a good idea.
|
| Putin's approval rating is at 70% [0]. From [1]
| (referring to the invasion of Crimea):
|
| > President Putin's approval rating among the Russian
| public increased by nearly 10% since the crisis began, up
| to 71.6%, the highest in three years, according to a poll
| conducted by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion
| Research, released on 19 March.[346] Additionally, the
| same poll showed that more than 90% of Russians supported
| unification with the Crimean Republic
|
| So it looks to me that most Russians supported the Crimea
| invasion. Why would it be different now? I find it hard
| to believe that if Russia hadn't found such a stubborn
| resistance and would've been able to annex Ucrania
| quickly, which was what the Russian government thought
| would happen, in five years all the polls wouldn't show
| Russians supporting the invasion.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-
| approval-ra...
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_
| by_the_...
| aufhebung wrote:
| Putin has a 70% approval rating in the same way Stalin
| had near 100%.
| jotm wrote:
| Well, reading Youtube comments will make you want to puke
| on the whole of Russia. And no, there's zero chance it's
| all bots.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| I get where you are coming from, but falsifying election
| results and population polling are a bit different. putin
| himself is polling very frequently to get feedback (or
| validation) and until a few weeks ago there were even
| somewhat credible polling agencies that showed lower
| numbers but still majority.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > I get where you are coming from, but falsifying
| election results and population polling are a bit
| different
|
| Do you remember "garbage in - garbage out"?
|
| If people fed nothing but bravado on how the glorious
| leader shines the path to the wonderful future, how in
| the world they would see him in a negative light?
|
| The last two years showed everyone what even the
| professionals are happy to spew an utter nonsense,
| directly contradicting their profession and education,
| just because they want to feel that way.
|
| And remember - population polling gives you information
| on how people feel about something, not _why_ do they
| feel that way.
|
| PS:
|
| "Let us ask your opinion on these matters:
|
| 1. How do you feel about our President?
|
| #a I'm delighted to live in this glorious days and I'm
| fully supported our glorious leader!
|
| #b I'm a shithead and prefer to spend the rest of my days
| in gulag."
|
| Hyperbole, sure, but how the poll is constructed, where
| it was performed also matters.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| I kind of agree with you on "garbage in - garbage out" ..
| majority eats up garbage and therefore approve putin.
| Decision to eat garbage still lays with them.
|
| On the other hand, I have a limited amount of empathy and
| at the moment it is being consumed by people who are
| actually being bombed by not their own government.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > Decision to eat garbage still lays with them.
|
| Hmm, no.
|
| I would say _believing_ that garbage is on them. [1]
|
| But when you have nothing other than garbage?
|
| Don't forget what this is the country where you can be
| detained for holding an invisible placard [0] - so saying
| something out of _the party_ line is a quick way for the
| unemployment at least, hence the people who could had
| provided some other info (primarily on TV) have big
| incentives not to do so.
|
| [0] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-protest-
| arrests/25324619.html
|
| [1] which is another joke because half of those people
| lived or at least were born when "government never tells
| the truth" was the default MO _even for the government
| itself_.
| 8358373583 wrote:
| Who collected those statistics and how closely connected
| are they with the state?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> The wast majority of Russian people have nothing to do
| with what the state is doing._
|
| Then they can all take to the streets and protest against
| the regime to make their PoV heard. Sure, the protesters
| will clash with the police/military who will use force
| against them, but if it's indeed the vast majority of
| people as you claim, against the regime, then the
| police/military cannot overwhelm over ~80 million people on
| the streets.
|
| If the vast majority refuse to take to the streets in
| protest, then it means they silently or otherwise approve
| the government's actions. It's up to the Russian people to
| sort out their politics, by violent force if need be, if
| they're truly unhappy with the past 30 years of fake
| democracy and corruption among their leadership.
|
| Same how in 1989 people and students in Romania took to the
| streets, en masse, to oust the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu,
| who refused to step down and had the military shoot the
| protestors. Spoiler alert: he still got ousted, so the
| excuse that "we can't protest in Russia against Putin" does
| not fly.
| hogrider wrote:
| Why would they care so much about Ukraine so as to make a
| revolution out of it? The west can get so delusional...
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| Thing is that people in russia are flooded with false
| information and Putin propaganda. If you trust these kind
| of news (like many US citizens believe in stuff that
| Trump says including voter fraud), then there's no need
| for them to stand up. And everyone who is trying to tell
| the truth will go to prison.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| One thing that comes to mind about Ceausescu, when I
| visited his 'palace' (the people's house) was how many
| escape routes and hidden exits there were (including
| apparently a network of tunnels under the city)
|
| For a man who is said to have thought the people deeply
| loved him, he sure was paranoid. Or maybe he actually
| knew how much people hated him and he was just fooling
| himself?
|
| But Putin is nowhere as unpopular as Ceausescu was. His
| approval ratings that I've seen are no different from
| those of Western leaders. A lot of people there seem to
| believe Ukraine is full of Nazis. Nobody is going to
| storm his palace any time soon and I don't think the
| sanctions will help. They'll just reinforce his "the West
| is out to get us" narrative. Don't forget they don't have
| anything reminiscent of a free press anymore.
| ajuc wrote:
| If even 10% of Russians protested Putin would cease to be a
| problem.
|
| The problem is - as long as the economy is fine they don't
| care.
| helge9210 wrote:
| > The problem is - as long as the economy is fine they
| don't care
|
| Personal anecdote:
|
| In April 2010 I was protesting ratification of the so
| called "Kharkiv Pact"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Pact) in Kyiv. I
| remember a moment, when I was single-handedly pushing
| three rows of soldiers (national guard; they didn't
| really try) and almost no one else joined, one of the
| members of our group said to another: "There won't be a
| revolution today. Let's wait till they start losing
| money, then we'll try again".
| lisnake wrote:
| Last year at least 60% of Belarus protested Lukaschenko,
| and did it for months. What good did that bring them? 10%
| is not nearly enough for Russian situation
| sidibe wrote:
| Probably would have been effective if not for Putin's
| support
| monocasa wrote:
| Putin also has Putin's support.
| goldfeld wrote:
| It's easy to ride a high horse and advise states (which have
| always been vicious, in old or modern history) to do the
| right thing, period. Who has done more war crimes and
| inhumane acts in recent years, and in recent decades, around
| the world, Russia or the U.S.? Which is to say, the U.S.
| cannot go around lecturing anyone about morality or worse.
| Have people forgotten the nuclear bombing of huge Japanese
| cities? It's beyond atrocious.
| AvesMerit wrote:
| Look, undeniably, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a bad
| thing. It's not constructive to dredge up unrelated bad
| actions from other actors
| dzader wrote:
| Simple, Russia has.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Following this logic, no one should ever feel guilty or be
| compelled to stop doing something morally wrong, because
| someone else probably did worse in recent memory. Someone
| else's bad behavior does not manifest _permission_ for you
| to do the same.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| As a staunch advocate against war crimes, the sensible move is
| to outlaw the Russian commander in chief.
| tpoacher wrote:
| The reason it has a poor track record of working has more to do
| with market dominance and underhanded monopoly practices
| though. The situation here is arguably the reverse.
| ajuc wrote:
| Stop killing people by hundreds is one option.
| pabs3 wrote:
| There are at least four Russian Linux distros and I've heard
| that one of them is used by the Russian military.
|
| Apparently the Russian government are talking about creating
| their own GitHub replacement, as China did with gitee.com.
|
| https://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/03/07/You-And-Whose-GitH...
|
| So the Russian government are probably already in the process
| of transitioning to FLOSS.
| ihateolives wrote:
| > So the Russian government are probably already in the
| process of transitioning to FLOSS.
|
| That would be the only free thing in Russia then.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > So the Russian government are probably already in the
| process of transitioning to FLOSS.
|
| There is something absurd with that sentence, Software
| licenses are completely irrelevant if piracy is legal.
| rectang wrote:
| Exactly, they aren't going to respect your FLOSS license
| conditions.
| pabs3 wrote:
| FLOSS license conditions aren't very well respected even
| in the West. Hopefully the lawsuit against Vizio will set
| a precedent that makes it possible for users to enforce
| them as well as copyright holders.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
| rectang wrote:
| I agree that there are many violations, but I also think
| that there is a lot of compliance, due to both goodwill
| and fear.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > So the Russian government are probably already in the
| process of transitioning to FLOSS.
|
| That might seem ironical in multiple ways: a dictatorship
| where freedom of expression is suppressed that promotes FLOSS
| because they don't trust closed software. Maybe the western
| world can learn a lesson or two from that.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Its probably more that they care about having the source
| code and being able to modify and rebuild it rather than
| the FLOSS licenses. For most proprietary software you don't
| have the source.
| yreg wrote:
| Would it be crazy to have a similar law in a non-sanctioned
| country?
|
| If some product is impossible to buy legally in some region
| there is little harm in pirating it.
| tomp wrote:
| I would love this kind of law.
|
| "All digital content must be made available in country X at
| the lowest price available in any other jurisdiction. If this
| condition is not met, said digital content can be freely
| accessed by any other means."
|
| Unfortunately, most EU & other countries signed up to the
| draconian "life+130years" copyright agreements...
| ericmay wrote:
| Which works well until your country wants to create its own
| software. Then someone sets up a shell company in Somalia
| and someone says well if your software isn't as cheap as it
| is in Somalia than we get to pirate it...
| [deleted]
| gred wrote:
| It also, interestingly, digs the hole deeper. Small developers
| will almost certainly stop selling into Russia. It's probably
| collateral damage in the grand scheme of things, but a real
| side effect nonetheless.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Devils advocate: if the majority of business software is sold
| from the US and the US is refusing to sell software to Russia,
| what choice is there?
|
| The right choice is to stop murdering civilians in Ukraine and
| invading their free nation. It's pretty simple.
| Hroble wrote:
| Russia has a poor track record of working. Making bad copies of
| the software is a valid choice for them, the narrative is that
| the sanctions will not scare them because russia can make
| everything themselves, also better than the rotten west.
| morganslaw wrote:
| Pirated software is okay for home users, but in a mission
| critical business context, you need constant support and
| security updates. Pirated software, by its nature, will not be
| as secure as official software, and it will not be as up to
| date. Also who do you call when you need support?
|
| Basically pirated software is not a solution for mission
| critical businesses.
|
| Also who do you think is cracking the software? The same people
| who would find it very easy to put in malware into the
| software.
|
| If Russia is running on pirated software, it will be a
| nightmare.
|
| They need to get off Western software and push open source
| alternatives. they are massively inferior, especially in the
| B2B software side of things, but so be it. This is what Russia
| needs to do now.
| eloisius wrote:
| Not just lack of updates. It's also a vector for distributing
| exploits. Encouraging piracy while the country is under
| intense cyber attack seems like a risky move.
| mywittyname wrote:
| There's a possibility that these hacking/cracking groups
| are also under the purview of the government. Meaning, they
| could release non-malware infested cracks for
| goverment/corporate use. It's aslo possible that the teams
| may patch security exploits along with their cracks.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > If Russia is running on pirated software, it will be a
| nightmare.
|
| Wasn't this already the case for pretty much every entity
| outside the government and the largest corporations?
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| >> what choice is there?
|
| I know this one! They should have chosen not to fucking invade
| Ukraine.
| xvilka wrote:
| It might spur development of the FOSS alternatives, like Wine and
| ReactOS, FreeCAD and LibreCAD, GIMP and Krita, Octave and Sage,
| etc; for all kinds of the proprietary software that was blocked.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| The year of the Linux desktop is finally upon us! (In Russia.)
| davidgerard wrote:
| https://ru.libreoffice.org/
| rwmj wrote:
| If closed source forks of copyleft projects become legal then
| will FOSS still benefit? On the one hand, just generally having
| FOSS more widely used could be good in and of itself, and
| closed source forks are difficult to maintain especially if the
| project upstream is lively. On the other hand it might mean
| Russian companies adding great features to GPL software and not
| sharing them.
| pabs3 wrote:
| > Russian companies adding great features to GPL software and
| not sharing them.
|
| I suspect that is already happening. For example Astra Linux
| is a Debian derivative but their developers don't appear to
| be active within Debian.
|
| The other thing is that some FOSS may remove support for
| Russia in some way. A font removed characters only used in
| Russian/Belarusian. Qt are blocking downloads from
| Russia/Belarus. OpenBLAS are considering removing support for
| Russian Elbrus processors.
|
| https://github.com/hikikomori82/osifont/issues/11
| https://lists.qt-
| project.org/pipermail/development/2022-Marc...
| https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS/issues/3551 https://www.ph
| oronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenBLAS...
|
| So the non-shared forks of FOSS are likely to be inevitable.
| SSLy wrote:
| > A font removed characters only used in Russian/Belarusian
|
| All else aside, that's just bloody stupid. A lot of
| Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| That particular one was stupid because it also affected
| other Cyrillic languages even though it was stated
| otherwise.
| [deleted]
| piskov wrote:
| One should take this with a grain of salt. For now, it's only a
| rumor.
|
| And it may stay that way because there're a lot of domestic
| software in Russia as well: you cannot legalize piracy without
| hurting your own IT.
|
| The same was with IT industry support rumors last week: one
| (among several) of the leaked proposals was to remove taxes on
| salary for IT. It stayed off the table.
| gs17 wrote:
| Russian software isn't affected:
|
| > among which is being discussed the suspension of criminal and
| administrative liability for use of pirated software "from
| countries supporting sanctions".
| usednet wrote:
| A fantastic silver lining of the war I suppose.
| advael wrote:
| Look I know what you're all thinking, but we shouldn't let this
| one good decision trick us into supporting the current Russian
| regime
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Were these laws even really enforced in the first place?
|
| Russia has always been pretty notorious for piracy.
| MrDisposable wrote:
| In recent years, no. Everyone was afraid of huge fines (and
| maybe even jail terms, if memory serves) for pirated software,
| and there was a time when police actively searched office
| computers for pirated software from major suppliers that had
| branches in Russia (Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk etc).
|
| Torrents, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.
| kobalsky wrote:
| I don't know what the deal is in Russia but in Argentina piracy
| is rampant but Microsoft has been ruthless and they have done
| stuff it would make your skin crawl.
|
| Microsoft basically has power of police here. I don't know who
| they bribed or in exchange of what or how they managed to
| achieve this.
|
| They go for companies, basically they send you an email and ask
| you about your infrastructure, licenses and tell you on X day
| we will be there to audit the software licenses that you are
| using. This is not optional, this is mandatory. You have to let
| them in since they will come with cops if necessary.
|
| We have dealt with them sadly, but we are a linux only shop so
| we made abundtantly clear that we were going to fight until the
| end to make them accountable and bill them dearly for every
| second they spent here. After a few back and forths they
| decided it wasn't necessary to audit our company, probably not
| because of our indisposition, but because they probably
| realized we weren't lying and there was no money to collect
| here.
|
| To add insult to injury they will use these emails to offer you
| Microsoft Teams. It's insane.
|
| I cannot wish them ill enough.
| fluoridation wrote:
| I'm from Argentina. I've heard this before and I didn't
| really believe it, and maybe I still don't. Like, there are
| so many things you might do that could be a spanner in the
| works for this scheme. What if you hang up on them? What if
| you refuse to answer the door? To my knowledge there are no
| laws that require one to open the door for police; if they
| have an order from a judge they don't need to knock. What if
| you refuse to unlock your systems to allow them to inspect
| them?
|
| Do you know where I could get more information on this?
| kobalsky wrote:
| laws 11723 and 25036, they can get a judge's order, google:
| software legal allanamientos
|
| don't confuse raids of people distributing software
| illegaly, this happened to companies that were suspected of
| using pirated versions at some scale and for some reason
| didn't want to settle.
| fluoridation wrote:
| What I'm reading is that they basically do have warrants.
| What a bunch of crooks, both the judges and the corporate
| drones.
| salzig wrote:
| Bye Bye Russian Translations.
|
| Edit: I mean, who would support translations of a language where
| you're software almost 100% gets pirated.
|
| Edit 2: Downvote, without a comment? That's not what i expected
| from HN.
| BasDirks wrote:
| I disagree with the downvotes. Your first edit does a lot to
| clarify your position, but could you expand on it?
| Mezzie wrote:
| > I mean, who would support translations of a language where
| you're software almost 100% gets pirated.
|
| Language nerds can be as weird/passionate as tech nerds. Plenty
| of people who will translate things for either language
| politics reasons (dislike of English as the lingua franca) or
| for fun.
| DeWilde wrote:
| There are 10's of millions of primary Russian speakers living
| outside of Russia. Much more than some Asian, African, and
| European languages that are regularly translated.
| dijit wrote:
| Russian is spoken in many countries outside of Russia.
|
| My former girlfriend is from Estonia and speaks Russian
| natively.
|
| I have colleagues who are Ukrainian and speak Russian
| primarily.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Let's rename the language then. From now on, the people in
| Russia are proud about their language, North East Estonian.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Russians sometimes name Ukrainian "Little Russian". So the
| newspeak name for Russian could of course be "East
| Ukrainian" or "Little Ukrainian".
| nasretdinov wrote:
| I think if you are to follow that logic, then English
| should've been long renamed to something else too.
| xdennis wrote:
| Maybe she should speak Estonian natively.
| salzig wrote:
| Yes it is, but what else is left to protect your software?
| [deleted]
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| You really think a missing translation is going to protect
| anything? I'm not from Russia, but close enough. We've seen
| a lot of unofficially translated software (and games) back
| in the 90s. Some of those translations were really good.
| And you don't need source code to do it.
| DeWilde wrote:
| Nothing really. Piracy is widespread in my country and a
| lot of software being pirated isn't translated.
|
| End result? People learned English.
| salzig wrote:
| which would be a preferred goal to have? I'm mean, it
| doesn't hurt to have more russians beeing more capable in
| english?
| 8358373583 wrote:
| I don't think there is any reason to believe laws against
| piracy are effective at reducing piracy. I think the people who
| paid for Russian language software before will continue doing
| so as long as they can still make the payment.
| thfuran wrote:
| Which they very well may not be able to do at the moment.
| thepangolino wrote:
| elsjaako wrote:
| If office were not legally available from Microsoft, but was
| legally available from professional "software distributors"
| (e.g. crackers) with helpdesk services, then there would
| definitely be large companies buying MS office from the
| distributors.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I don't get the downvotes ether.
|
| You've just lost the vast majority of the market who NEED
| Russian translations to use your software.
|
| I imagine most Russian speakers outside of Russia, who buy
| software, would also have an least some proficiency in either
| English, French or another supported language.
|
| Even though I haven't kept up with my French, I could probably
| manage to use a French version of Windows. It's going to be
| harder, but not impossible.
| twa999 wrote:
| until I am out of bullets or until I am out of blood I will fight
| for US copyright law in russia.
|
| i pledge my allegiance to the walt disney company
| bbarnett wrote:
| Heh, would be just slightly disturbing if now NATO countries
| suddenly said "no fly zone!"
| twa999 wrote:
| Imagine if U.S. politicians decided to go to war on behalf of
| corporations and their interests. That'd be crazy.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| jdrc wrote:
| you would not want a country in which politicians decide
| alone against the interest of their businesses and their
| own people
|
| That's pretty much exactly what Putin or Kim jong un is
| doing
|
| https://glineq.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-end-of-end-of-
| histor...
| twa999 wrote:
| thank you world bank economist. You truly have the best
| interests of the people at heart.
| dang wrote:
| Please stop posting flamewar comments. We ban accounts
| that do that, because it destroys what this place is
| supposed to be for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful.
| contravariant wrote:
| It's the 'their own people' part that's problematic. If
| they only decide against the interest of businessed but
| _in_ the interest of the people then I have no problems
| with it.
| norswap wrote:
| As if they were enforcing jack squat currently??
|
| It's well known that Russia is a safe haven for piracy &
| copyright infringment. Can't say that hasn't benefitted me quite
| a few times.
| nosianu wrote:
| Ukraine was the same last time I checked. Which, admittedly,
| was 2006 when I bought cracked software on an Odessa book & CD
| market (lots of small vendor stalls, a permanent market). I've
| been to both Russia and Ukraine a few times since but that was
| the only time I needed software (temporarily, only while I was
| there, relax guys - back then I had a paid license for the
| entire Adobe Suite back in the office at home).
|
| Picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/11634911@N04/4005305105
|
| The illegal software actually came with pretty good support and
| money-back guarantee, and it wasn't just en empty promise.
|
| So, this phenomenon is not limited to Russia and in the
| specific current context, unless things in Ukraine have
| changed(?), they both do it.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I believe they will be known as Software Privateers as their
| hacks will be conducted under letter of Marque and Reprisal.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| To be honest this is easily less unfair than the ever-extending
| copyright periods.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| The article itself notes that this is more of a political
| statement than of any practical consequence. Piracy is already
| rampant in Russia.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| excalibur wrote:
| In Soviet Russia, pirates ban YOU!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| What I got from that, is "Nothing much is changing, but we won't
| listen to Western corporate whining, while pretending to care."
| ck2 wrote:
| Between this and the news they are now arresting anyone for
| posting or broadcasting anything they consider "fake news" (and
| shutting down BBC in Russia) they are in full culture collapse.
|
| Anyone can see this won't end well and won't end anytime soon,
| what country is going to end sanctions while even one Russian
| soldier is still in Ukraine and for example it took TWENTY years
| for US to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. So likely still there
| until 2030 unless somehow Putin is replaced with sanity which is
| unlikely.
|
| Now I wonder what country they will do this to next because they
| are already under maximum sanctions and they know NATO/US won't
| go in and won't even do a no-fly zone. So why not double down
| with yet another country?
| ericmay wrote:
| Moldova is next, and Georgia. Both applied for EU membership
| this past week (token gesture as they won't be admitted,
| certainly not quickly enough). The "no-fly zone" also means no
| Ukrainian forces flying and is kind of a benefit for Russia
| right now given how the war _appears_ to be going. It's also a
| risky escalation without much benefit. NATO jets shooting at
| Russian jets give Putin the justification he needs to go attack
| NATO countries.
| ck2 wrote:
| Yes but Putin is dropping 500 pound bombs on civilian
| apartment complexes. Jets vs Jets and military vs military is
| the horror of war but right now it's a slaughter of the
| innocent.
|
| To pretend it's -not- going to end up in multi-country
| conflict if we just sit back is -exactly- what happened in
| WW2, everyone sat back and watched while millions of
| innocents suffered and died and then finally drew a line.
|
| Ok, no "boots on the ground". But stop the 500 pound bombs on
| apartment complexes. Imagine if it was your street and what
| you'd be begging the world to be saved.
| ericmay wrote:
| I don't think you can piecemeal it. If we do a "no-fly
| zone" you might as well put boots on the ground because
| that's what will happen anyway. What do you think stops
| Putin from "feeling threatened" by NATO warplanes flying
| out of Poland and using a nuclear weapon on an airbase to
| "solve the problem". If you cross the threshold then why
| wouldn't he just assume NATO is attacking Russia and just
| start new military operations? The no-fly zone is certainly
| worth considering but it adds instability with
| unpredictable outcomes.
|
| Of course if people were dropping bombs on my neighborhood
| I'd be begging for salvation. I'd be begging for more than
| a no-fly zone. I'd want Russian military bases bombed and
| international forces engaging in combat to repel invaders
| too. Should we also do that? Russians aren't using only
| 500lb bombs. They're on the ground with machine guns, they
| launch missiles from Russian territory, and they use
| artillery.
|
| We have to be careful. There is a lot at stake here. I
| agree with your suggestions about appeasement, but the
| situations aren't totally the same since NATO apparently
| has a far more dominant military and economically it's not
| even a discussion. Germany had the best military to start
| WWII.
| vkou wrote:
| 'Enforcing a no-fly zone' is a euphemism for 'declaring
| war'.
|
| You can't enforce the former without doing the latter,
| because people with SAMs are going to start shooting at
| your airplanes, and your 'no-fly zone' now turns into a 'we
| are bombing ground troops zone' which is indistinguishable
| from a 'we have declared war' zone.
| spupe wrote:
| The tech aspect of the sanctions deserve to be more scrutinized.
| The average Russian company certainly can pirate Windows (now
| legally), but now they have to worry about all sorts of backdoors
| and vulnerabilities that will expose them to their competitors.
| It would seem that the logical solution would be to adopt FOSS
| rather than pirate, at least for any serious professional work.
| alin23 wrote:
| I'm tired of the TnT Russian team cracking my macOS apps. Both
| Lunar (https://lunar.fyi) and rcmd (https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd)
| are now available for free on macOS piracy websites.
|
| I made many attempts at discouraging this through anti-piracy
| measures I learned while working as a malware researcher a few
| years ago. But if I want my apps to also be available on offline
| devices, there's really no way to combat this.
|
| The apps are also targetted more toward power users which are
| more likely to know about cracked apps. This is really hurting
| indie devs.
| MAGZine wrote:
| Not that you asked my opinion, but $23/year for screendimming
| software--its no wonder people crack this.
|
| The only realistic scenario that I'd pay that is if my employer
| was fronting the cost. Then again, maybe for some people it
| really is delivering that much value.
|
| Lunar lite and rcmd seem priced fairly. If it makes you feel
| any better (probably not), the people pirating your software
| probably wouldn't have paid for it anyhow. Or if they did pay
| for it, would pay for it with things like stolen app store
| giftcards.
|
| In another life, I was quite money-limited, and so I downloaded
| basically every game, movie, song, and app. I didn't feel badly
| about it either. I was never going to buy the media. I
| couldn't. Once I got old enough and had enough disposable
| income to not have to pirate things, I stopped. But quashing my
| piracy would have never equated in more sales. Anyone who sees
| a pirate download and assume that's a lost sale is deluded--its
| not happening.
|
| I think the best methods are trying to get people to pay (who
| haven't already) are probably guilt or a productive-spirited
| suggestion. If you can detect that someone is cracking your
| software or doesn't have a valid license, put a donation link
| in the shape of a coffee cup in the corner of your software. At
| least people have the option to support you. Otherwise--you'll
| never best the crackers.
| munificent wrote:
| You say:
|
| _> I think the best methods are trying to get people to pay
| (who haven 't already) are probably guilt or a productive-
| spirited suggestion._
|
| And you also say:
|
| _> I didn 't feel badly about it either._
|
| Those don't seem consistent.
|
| The reality is that cracking and using cracked software is
| ethically and immorally wrong. People do it because they're
| selfish and can get away with it.
| MAGZine wrote:
| You make it sound like people who pirate software are
| trying to hurt creators.
|
| They're not. The means to acquire the software are just too
| great. If you give people a way to express their gratitude
| in other ways--they might (they also might not. heck they
| probably won't. but I'd also expect it to be non-zero).
| munificent wrote:
| _> You make it sound like people who pirate software are
| trying to hurt creators._
|
| No, I am absolutely _not_ claiming any intention malice.
| I 'm claiming _selfishness_.
|
| _> The means to acquire the software are just too
| great._
|
| It doesn't matter. If you didn't make X, and the person
| who did make X doesn't give you any right to X... you
| don't have any right to X.
|
| They made it. By virtue of actually creating the thing,
| they morally have all of the rights to decide who should
| have access to it. If they haven't given you access to
| it, what right do you have to claim over it?
| alin23 wrote:
| It's not _screen dimming_. It is an app to fully control the
| monitor without using its physical buttons.
|
| Lunar can change the hardware brightness, the same one that
| you can change using the monitor OSD. That in itself required
| a lot of reverse engineering and research about the DDC
| protocol.
|
| Adaptive brightness, ambient light sensor integration and
| other automatic features also needed months of non-stop work.
|
| Plus, the app is open source, trying to give something back
| to the community which gave me the inspiration to create
| this: https://github.com/alin23/Lunar
|
| Even with $23 per license, after taxes I barely make half of
| what I made at my previous job where I worked less hours.
|
| I don't understand how you can dismiss this so simply.
| the people pirating your software probably wouldn't have paid
| for it anyhow
|
| I heard this argument so many times.. it's like saying to
| someone who just got their bike stolen while they were trying
| to sell it | the thief would have probably
| never bought it
|
| If you don't need the Pro features, don't pay for them and
| don't use them. Simple as that. Why does it feel okay to
| steal them in the software world, but it's clearly a crime in
| the real world?
| iso1210 wrote:
| > it's like saying to someone who just got their bike
| stolen while they were trying to sell it "the thief would
| have probably never bought it"
|
| No it's not.
|
| If a thief takes your bike, you no longer have it, you
| can't sell it.
| alin23 wrote:
| Indeed, the problem in the analogy seems to be that
| software is infinitely able to duplicate. But what's
| overlooked is that software also needs maintenance, lots
| of it.
|
| Tomorrow will be an Apple Event and I'm already expecting
| some new hardware I'll have to support or some breaking
| change to an internal API (because controlling monitors
| isn't possible with public APIs).
|
| When a bike is bought, the owner is done with it. While
| the software developer is bound to keep the software
| running and compatible with new technologies.
|
| Of course, I could just forget about it and leave the
| users that bought it with an unusable app when the next
| MacBook comes out. If piracy is accepted, why wouldn't
| this be accepted too.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Whether someone steals your zero marginal cost good has
| no effect on whether you will update your software. If
| the thief would have paid it might, but if they wouldn't
| buy your product anyway you're no worse off.
| mnsc wrote:
| The problem with the analogy is that it doesn't work.
| Never has and never will. And you started it with
| comparing piracy to a bike theft. If someone without
| money came and stole my bike but I still had a copy of my
| bike. I wouldn't mind.
| alin23 wrote:
| Ok maybe not a bike. Maybe a jar of strawberry jam filled
| from a large pot :)
|
| You won't care as much about the theft since you still
| have an almost full pot of strawberry jam, but you care a
| little since that pot will eventually end.
|
| Analogs in the order of appearance: -
| jar of jam: copy of Lunar - large pot of jam: my
| willingness to keep updating the app in a world where
| everyone sees theft as "meh whatever, I wouldn't have
| paid anyway"
| some_random wrote:
| It's infuriating that this argument is still around, and
| actually taken seriously.
| fuckcensorship wrote:
| In the wise words of GabeN:
|
| > "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a
| pricing issue. It's a service issue," explained Newell
| during his time on stage at the Washington Technology
| Industry Association's (WTIA) Tech NW conference. "The
| easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy
| technology to work. It's by giving those people a service
| that's better than what they're receiving from the
| pirates." [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-
| service-...
| postalrat wrote:
| Then explain all the steam sales.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| People are willing to pay steam $X for a game. If it's
| not available for that price they just won't play it.
| conductr wrote:
| I feel like steam sales validate this point. Steam
| provides a better service than downloading warez and
| cracked games from p2p sites. For many, it's better than
| visiting a local retail/GameStop and buying the game. It
| also unlocks a world of indie games that would otherwise
| be not so easily discovered/attainable. So, people pay.
| postalrat wrote:
| I meant to say all big sales steam has. You know, the
| ones that brought in like 80% of the users since they
| were getting such a good deal.
|
| "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a
| pricing issue. It's a service issue," - GabeN
|
| Seems like a pricing issue as well as a service issue.
| MAGZine wrote:
| sure, until you look at the completion% of those games.
|
| People are buying things not to play them, but because
| it's a good deal/easy to do. Many of the games on the
| sale are acquired and not played.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Revenue maximization.
| AnonHP wrote:
| Not GP.
|
| > Even with $23 per license, after taxes I barely make half
| of what I made at my previous job where I worked less
| hours. I don't understand how you can dismiss this so
| simply.
|
| Seeing the odd numbered price of $23, I presume you have
| tried different pricing tiers and options, since pricing is
| a matter of elasticity and finding the right price point to
| maximize your revenue would require some effort.
|
| > the people pirating your software probably wouldn't have
| paid for it anyhow I heard this argument so many times..
| it's like saying to someone who just got their bike stolen
| while they were trying to sell it | the thief would have
| probably never bought it
|
| Actually, that saying about piracy is true many a times. It
| doesn't matter that it doesn't work in your favor either
| way. Anecdotally, I decide what I'm willing to pay for
| something and what I'm not willing to pay for something.
| Have I pirated software? Yes, I have in the distant past.
| And during those times, I wouldn't have bought them at
| those prices either.
|
| Maybe you need to change your website messaging to
| encourage those who cannot or will not pay to use the Lite
| version and encourage those who want the Pro version to
| pay. Pricing doesn't have to be static all the time.
|
| I hope you find the best options that work well for you and
| your customers.
| axg11 wrote:
| You're describing the complexity of achieving the outcome.
| That is a great achievement - you spent months of work to
| achieve something technically complex. Congratulations,
| sincerely. However, to the end user, Lunar is a utility
| that controls screen brightness. I too am not surprised
| that many people are reluctant to pay a yearly subscription
| to control the brightness of their display.
| alin23 wrote:
| The screen brightness changing is free forever. The
| license is unlimited (not yearly subscription) and only
| for the Pro features (automatic adaptive brightness,
| sensor integration etc.)
| vmception wrote:
| The market says this is mispriced. Has nothing to do with
| the complexity.
|
| Per license at the wrong price is the wrong price.
|
| If the offline version cant be protected and the legal
| remedy is inadequate then pick a different line of business
| and exit the market.
| alin23 wrote:
| The license is unlimited. You can pay the next year only
| if you need the updates.
|
| If the app keeps working as expected and you don't need
| any update, the Pro features will be available forever on
| that license.
| vmception wrote:
| The price is wrong and you don't want to admit that.
|
| This is a free utility or $1 for a tiny tiny market.
|
| Hook people and then charge them in that kind of shitty
| update model. Or a different model. Upsell something else
| in the app. Collect and sell data. If that price and
| funnel is not worth your time, then you have to do
| something else, thats it.
| alin23 wrote:
| wtf
|
| edit: Oh I see, you're that guy that comments on
| everything [0]. Sorry for responding in the first place.
|
| [0] https://whaly.io/posts/top-10k-commenters-of-hacker-
| news-in-...
| vmception wrote:
| That's me! My submissions havent yet hit though, so far.
|
| Your $23 license-if-you-want-to-upgrade is arbitrarily
| priced for what consumers are used to.
| alin23 wrote:
| Not sure if you knew this, but you're already appearing
| in Google search predictions:
| https://f.alinpanaitiu.com/jKbRqM/vmception.png
| vmception wrote:
| like the license crack for your software
| MAGZine wrote:
| That's actually really cool. Kudos to you.
|
| Unfortunately, as cool as it is, I don't think it really
| changes much. I took a quick scan of your website,
| determined it was expensive screen-dimming software. Others
| are likely to do the same.
|
| I have no doubt that this took an extraordinary amount of
| time to get right. You also did a beautiful job with the
| app and the website. I've tried to put something together
| that's a fraction of the complexity, and, well--it's just a
| _lot_ of work. You should be proud of what you built.
|
| That being said, all of what I said still stands: even
| though it allows you to control the hardware through
| software, it's still an expensive piece of software, and
| it's sort of niche. Having to rebuy the software every year
| for updates is also sort of a piss-off, even though I know
| you're doing lots of testing for each OS update and
| possibly hardware revisions too.
| alin23 wrote:
| Thanks! Well I guess that's just the current state of
| selling software. People are reluctant to pay for the
| work.
|
| Open-source solutions are everywhere, and like someone
| said recently, open-source is seen as _free support_
| unfortunately.
| AnonHP wrote:
| > People are reluctant to pay for the work.
|
| Having seen a few different situations, sometimes people
| may not pay because:
|
| a) it's quite expensive in their currency
|
| b) they don't really have a payment method available for
| international transactions
|
| c) maybe they're just poor and got some kind of a hand-
| me-down computer with their savings
|
| d) culturally, in many places hardware has been seen as
| worth paying for, but software is seen as something you
| just copy (don't even get me started on the pricing
| differences between app releases that do the same thing
| but run on Macs and on iOS/iPadOS devices)
|
| e) there is a sense of entitlement towards bits, be they
| apps or photos or music or movies or TV shows
| waffleiron wrote:
| f) People feel uncomfortable with the 1 year updates.
| It's seriously off putting to me, as these days
| everything turns into a subscription. I understand that
| you don't want to maintain stuff forever for free, but I
| really hate that everything seemingly turns into a
| subscription.
|
| I don't want to pay the full price for some updates in
| the future. Your app seems like it would sell so much
| better as an impulse buy pricing wise, but that's just
| me. If this works for you, it works for you.
|
| I don't mind the price personally but together with the
| "subscription" feel I won't be buying it, one of the two
| needs to change for me to be interested.
| alin23 wrote:
| I completely agree. I am Romanian, and in our country,
| EUR20 for software was seen as an impossible amount of
| money. Nobody would pay that amount for software, even
| companies I worked at used pirated software.
|
| I sometimes get the "I come from a poor country" email
| and after checking if the email is not some usual
| spammer, I provide a 50-75% discount code depending on
| the country.
|
| I understand that price should be relative to the
| country, and I have smaller prices on Paddle for the
| countries that are supported.
| ensemblehq wrote:
| It depends. I think you'll need more work to find the
| right customer/market who values what you've built and is
| willing to pay. Potentially it could be a lot more than
| what your current price is, especially businesses.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Not that you asked my opinion, but $1,300 for iPhone--its no
| wonder people steal this.
|
| The only realistic scenario that I'd pay that is if my
| employer was fronting the cost. Then again, maybe for some
| people it really is delivering that much value.
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/12/19/crime-blotter-
| roo...
| MAGZine wrote:
| I categorically disagree with this false equivalence.
| Copyright infringement and theft are not the same--no
| matter how much knowledge workers would have you believe
| otherwise.
|
| Actually, I find it a little ironic that you backed up your
| statement using someone else's intellectual property.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What about products whose marginal cost is close to, but
| not zero? Is it okay to steal them?
| [deleted]
| degif wrote:
| The statement "Not that you asked my opinion, but $23/year
| for screendimming software--its no wonder people crack this."
| does not make any sense. If this is an application that only
| dimms the screen (which you can do multiple ways without any
| application) why would anyone make an effort of creating and
| distributing it and why would anyone make an effort on
| searching for a cracked version of given application? Surely
| there is some added value to it.
|
| Also "if you can detect that someone is cracking your
| software or doesn't have a valid license, put a donation link
| in the shape of a coffee cup in the corner of your software.
| At least people have the option to support you." I have no
| data to back this up, but I really doubt that the people that
| are money-limited or just don't want to pay 20$ for an
| application will suddenly support a developer voluntarily.
| alin23 wrote:
| I couldn't have said it better myself :)
|
| In the first 4 years, Lunar was actually completely free
| and supported by donations on BuyMeACoffee.
|
| I made a total of $5k in those 4 years from donations,
| probably even less after PayPal took their huge cut.
| MAGZine wrote:
| ah, see, you've applied logic where there is none. Am I
| really going to open a philosophical debate with myself
| when I visit a product's webpage? I scrolled through, I saw
| different scheduling types, some other features. But as a
| whole, the software's purpose is "make screen brighter or
| dimmer" and that's something I just don't have big use for.
|
| And on your second point. I also don't have data. But if
| people crck software that costs $23, maybe they're willing
| to pay some fraction that isn't $23. Isn't that reasonable?
| Or in your mind, are there two groups of people: one that
| will pay anything, and the other that will pay nothing?
| kemitchell wrote:
| We need a much stronger indie dev scene. Drop me an e-mail
| anytime if I might be of help.
| netr0ute wrote:
| > This is really hurting indie devs.
|
| The fix? FOSS.
| latexr wrote:
| > I'm tired of the TnT Russian team cracking my macOS apps.
|
| Another HN poster has a relevant suggestion[1]:
|
| > In the 90s I used to make money off shareware, and every time
| I release a new version hackers would release "cracks" for the
| license key. Eventually I figured out that these cracks are
| coming from Russia.
|
| >
|
| > In the next version of my program, I added a check for system
| language, and if I detect Russian then I bypass the license key
| checks, and the program is free to use. This stopped hackers
| from releasing cracks.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27184692
| jotm wrote:
| It's a neat trick, but pretty much everyone knows it
| nowadays. Could try detecting something else, not sure what
| though.
|
| On a related funny note, the first Metal Gear Solid V crack
| only worked on Chinese timezone or language setting, I forgot
| which.
| vmception wrote:
| They really pulling all the stops to make sure TorrentLeech never
| goes down
| Kelteseth wrote:
| Related: Qt disabled downloads for anyone that has a Belarus or
| Russian IP-Address. There are talks about why they blocked it
| currently going on at their public mailing list[1]. One argument
| that came up, is that the downloads are blocked, because Qt is
| also used in the military. My guess is that this will definitely
| strengthen other UI toolkits like Flutter in the future.
|
| [1] https://lists.qt-
| project.org/pipermail/development/2022-Marc...
| poulpy123 wrote:
| what other countries are blocked ?
| Kelteseth wrote:
| Looks like only Russia and Belarus.
| 8358373583 wrote:
| dchftcs wrote:
| Yes, it's insane that people who don't necessarily support
| Putin are deprived of resources and opportunity, all in the
| name of justice. I think a lot people just want to show they
| did something, just any random thing, not knowing that by
| alienating potential allies in Russia they're forcing people
| in Russia to beg to be on Putin's side.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Why do you attribute Qt's actions to racism rather than their
| stated reason?
|
| Even if you're right about them being disingenuous, I don't
| see why this would be racism. Maybe nationalism?
| dchftcs wrote:
| The person didn't attribute it to racism, instead just used
| racism as an analogy.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. I may have not read carefully
| enough.
| ttybird2 wrote:
| The thread in their forum:
| https://forum.qt.io/topic/134724/unlock-qt-in-russia
| simonh wrote:
| It won't make any real practical difference, there are plenty
| of indirect ways to get those downloads and I'm sure Russians
| will start mirroring the repos within the country. This sort of
| thing is more about making a point.
| xvilka wrote:
| Flutter is not an alternative to Qt, not even close. Not to
| speak about C++ compatibility. If anything, things like GTK+,
| WxWidgets, EFL are on the same page, albeit less polished and
| advanced.
| Kelteseth wrote:
| Depends on what your requirements are. If it "modern" design
| (let's not start the millionth discussion on what
| native/modern design is here), that is also supported on
| mobile/web, then I would say go with flutter as UI and
| something like rust as your main language to write your
| business logic in [1]. You can even use regular c++ with
| their FFI [2].
|
| [1] https://github.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_rust_bridge
|
| [2] https://docs.flutter.dev/development/platform-
| integration/c-...
| cryptica wrote:
| This is interesting. It seems to be the way forward. I think it
| should be extended to everything including hardware and medicine.
| Free market. Free to copy, free to improve the work of others.
| Companies need to get creative; be the first on the market then
| sell contracts to users, sell subscriptions, loyalty programs...
| They don't need copyright or patent protection; they just need
| creativity and they need to build trust with their customers.
|
| I don't believe for a second that this will harm innovation in
| any way. Big pharma dies most of their innovation using taxpayer
| money anyway... It costs them nothing so why would they stop R&D?
| If they did, some other company would quickly step in and do the
| R&D using government money...
| lsllc wrote:
| Dupe, link was posted 2 days ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30569648
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| That's not a dupe.
|
| > If a story has not had significant attention in the last year
| or so, a small number of reposts is ok.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
| lsllc wrote:
| Sure, if it was 6 months ago, but 2 days ago?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Finally, Richard Stallman won
| kemitchell wrote:
| Allowing copies doesn't guarantee access in the first place.
| That's why Stallman wrote a license that levers off copyright
| to require disclosure of trade secrets, i.e. source code.
|
| If the USA abolished software copyright tomorrow, more software
| development would go behind closed doors, and more finished
| apps would get distributed as binaries only. None of the users
| currently dependent on proprietary SaaS would be "liberated".
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Oh, excellent! May the Ukrainians win, and US IP bullshit loose.
|
| I bet this bodes well for the Indian sci hub case.
| Decabytes wrote:
| The author talks about access being shut off for subscription
| based softwares. I think this further highlights the danger of
| subscription based software (regardless of whether you think it's
| being used for "good" in this context).
|
| Also The Equity and Concourse Fonts used in this blog are by
| Matthew Butterick a famous Rackateer! Didn't expect to come
| across it here
| kemitchell wrote:
| Matthew is a famous _lawyer_ -Rackateer. The Equity family was
| originally designed for legal writing! I have been a proud
| licensee of his work for many years. I was grateful for his
| special permission to use the type on my blog, before that was
| covered by his standard, self-serve license.
|
| Alas, Matthew's fonts don't include Cyrillic alphabets. So I
| swap in Noto Serif for the body text of multilingual posts.
| molszanski wrote:
| I am not sure if I would be mad if anonymous would create a
| pirated versions all that software
| Dah00n wrote:
| So much propaganda in this thread.
| Proven wrote:
| steve76 wrote:
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Note this is about using pirated software. This isn't about
| breaking protection in software to allow it to be used. Breaking
| copy protection is still illegal in Russia.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| The NSA must be licking their chops right now at the thought of
| Russian government entities using zero-day riddled pirate
| software.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| now let's get Yandex back on track and we finally have a
| promising competitor for Google.
| moltke wrote:
| I wonder if this will be the end of the "software market." Wars
| tend to kill silly things.
| d82nsjk9 wrote:
| > Wars tend to kill silly things
|
| Like?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Wars tend to kill silly things.
|
| That silly thing that has provided a good living for me and my
| family for the last 25 years.
| d82nsjk9 wrote:
| and stolen jobs from other families who didn't go to a fancy
| college... what's your point?
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| simonh wrote:
| It's been shown time and time again that automation
| increases economic activity and jobs in an economy. This is
| why we don't live in a hell world of 99% unemployment and
| universal poverty, with unemployed horse buggy drivers on
| every street corner, despite unbelievably deep and
| extensive automation of almost every aspect of our lives.
| d82nsjk9 wrote:
| You seem to be right. Thanks!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >It's been shown time and time again that automation
| increases economic activity and jobs in an economy.
|
| Even if it spurs economic activity overall, it doesn't
| mean the gains of that activity are fairly distributed.
| Many towns were completely ruined by the decline in
| manufacturing jobs, even if others propspered.
| jcranberry wrote:
| Define "fairly". Mill towns were developed around
| manufacturing facilities. If you wanted to work in
| manufacturing, you had to follow a facility.
|
| There's also something to be learned from the past.
| Manufacturing destroyed the goods-producing
| artisan/mechanic/craftsmen industry.
| simonh wrote:
| That is true, fairness in society is an issue.
|
| Here in the UK we went through a painful economic decline
| in the 70s and restructuring in the early 80s. Things
| were pretty rough for a while, but then we went through
| an economic boom in the late 80s as productive forces
| were unleashed.
|
| I'm basically a capitalist because I believe capitalism
| is based on essential economic freedoms to own property,
| freely associate and buy and sell one's labour. But I
| also believe that there is a role for effective social
| services, public health care and a social safety net. You
| need a health economy to pay for it though, and that's
| the balance that needs to be struck.
| Mashimo wrote:
| What do you mean by that?
| stevespang wrote:
| jmpman wrote:
| How long until Western countries legalize software piracy of
| Russian software?
| [deleted]
| electrondood wrote:
| It's important to keep in perspective: this is a response to the
| natural consequences of invading a peaceful country unprovoked.
| mcv wrote:
| Considering a legislator in the US proposed to legalise real
| piracy (against Russian oligarchs), I actually find this proposal
| rather mild.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I'm really hoping that this could be the start of a worldwide IP
| reform (both copyright and patents). The idea of patents (limited
| exclusivity for disclosure) makes sense, but reality has strayed
| far from it. Likewise, copyright with its obscene and ever-
| expanding protection terms and lack of fair use protections in
| most countries is in dire need of a reform.
|
| However, this might also backfire by pushing companies more
| towards making everything a SaaS subscription service so
| customers never have any code they could pirate.
| danesparza wrote:
| I wonder what Jetbrains or Kaspersky feel about this (as they are
| prominent software companies that have offices in Russia)...
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