[HN Gopher] If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing
___________________________________________________________________
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing
Author : jay_kyburz
Score : 1253 points
Date : 2023-12-09 08:31 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
| eimrine wrote:
| I hope one day it will be a country somewhere on Earth who will
| have a ban for non-free software in the Constitution. The reality
| has changed too much to trust some people in govt to protect us
| from megacorps. We really need Richard Stallman kind of guy as a
| president of at least a tiniest country in the whole mad world.
| Flameancer wrote:
| That seems like a sure fire way to hamstring your country. Does
| that also include firmware for devices? Will this government
| have a large dev team to make software that its populace can
| use? Would you install trackers and block the internet in
| general so citizens can't get software that's open source.
| Would you demand visitors to surrender their devices while
| visiting so the authorities can check for non-free software
| installed?
| cturner wrote:
| These are fair criticisms of the proposal. A similar but more
| workable path would be a constitutional clause to 1. limit
| the concept of property to scarce goods and 2. outlaw the
| creation of legal mechanisms like copyright.
| 9dev wrote:
| We tried something similar once. It broke down quickly, led
| to the rich owning everything, required a surveillance
| nightmare to function, and left a permanent scar on the
| world. I don't think we should in engage this idea again.
| eimrine wrote:
| We did not try mass refusal of defective by design
| technologies since Clair Patterson.
| cturner wrote:
| I do not understand your point. (or maybe you did not
| understand mine)
| 9dev wrote:
| > limit the concept of property to scarce goods
|
| This is a very powerful yet very dangerous train of
| thought. Modifications to the concept of property were at
| the heart of the way communism has been implemented in
| the USSR, and it led to awful results.
|
| You might have a different goal in mind, but so did many
| of those involved in the October revolution.
| cturner wrote:
| There is no analogy between (strengthening scarce-
| property rights) and (communism). There is no analogy
| between (preventing copyright) and (communism).
| bambax wrote:
| Like the original article explains well, the question isn't
| technical, it's legal. You don't have to inspect users'
| devices if you make selling licences illegal, because then
| nobody can legally make money selling them.
| eimrine wrote:
| > Does that also include firmware for devices? Will this
| government have a large dev team to make software that its
| populace can use?
|
| The law I proposed has to be working against governments and
| semi-government institution such as banks, not about random
| Joes.
|
| The firmware question is interesting, because there is no
| such thing as FLOSS hardware except of some low-end
| microcontrollers, thank you for noticing.
|
| The most decent way of achieving this state seems like to
| prohibit only import of new devices and don't even bother
| about user's ones or anything second-hand. I have an
| observation that if you have 2 identical laptops but one with
| Nvidia/Amd and one with Intel HD then the former laptop will
| die naturally, such as any laptop with Ati today, while the
| latter laptop keeps serving until the physical death. You can
| install Ati driver for Windows 7 but can not for Windows 8
| and never; also proprietary Ati driver fails to work with
| modern Linux stack while free Ati driver uses to much energy
| to consider the device as a laptop. This is an example of
| natural death of proprietary hardware/software, just stop
| import new proprietary devices.
|
| Any authorities checking user devices for anything is a way
| of tyranny/authoritarism/totalitarism, nowadays the
| governmenns are working into totally another way, elusive to
| see for us the adults. In XXI governments use to propagate
| this or that ideas in schools. Teach them to have their fun
| and games in GNU/Linux distros and prohibit teachers to
| propagate Microsoft, Zoom, Viber, Google without restricting
| usage of these service for leisure. When the proprietary
| devices will start begging to buy a new hardware but it will
| not be available inside of the country then we will found
| ourselves in a new world.
|
| > Will this government have a large dev team to make software
| that its populace can use?
|
| There is no such thing in XXI as an independed government
| without a large dev team.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Yes and...
|
| We need a figure head with a strong moral and ethical compass
| who lives in private as if they are in public. Whom is capable
| of addressing all situations with grace, elegance, respect,
| compassion, and humility in that order only in reverse. One
| whom is frugal, well read, and courteous. One whom in being
| frugal is able to think of all and is able to stand fast in the
| face of corruption as they deep down truly experience the
| interconnectedness of life and by proxy society... and through
| experiences, travels and interactions has attained a working
| understanding of the all pervasive ripple effect.
|
| Oh yeah, and this person has to be willing to martyr themselves
| as the public life sucks!
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| Yeah, we need a good dictator (...) or we need to create
| federated horizontal power structures with consensus decision
| making as an alternative to current systems.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Who said anything about a dictator? What I was describing
| is the hypothetical dream traits of what I perceive are a
| necessity to be an effective leader in this era.
|
| It's a tall ask but someone embodying those traits would
| scoff at the notion of wanting, let alone keeping power!
|
| If you'd like to see what federated horizontal power
| structures with consensus decision making looks like and
| how it feels to participate in I challenge you to join a
| local planning commission in your city if you haven't
| already and if you live in america of course...
| tacocataco wrote:
| How about everyone self organizes into 2000ish person
| communes, all structured in the way they feel life is best
| lived?
| dottedmag wrote:
| Open source is a technical detail. One can see a less drastical
| change that will have the same effect.
|
| 1. Update the laws so that the shenanigans of the companies are
| finally named as they are:
|
| - Retroactively removing a feature is stealing from the owner.
|
| - Deleting bought digital content is also stealing from the
| owner.
|
| - Spying on a user is an unlawful search.
|
| 2. Make these transgressions be investigated by the
| prosecutor's office, so that a citizen only needs to report it
| to them and not figure out how to get a class lawsuit going.
| This will allow security researchers to do their job.
|
| 3. Classify devices with unpatched and unpatcheable security
| bugs as "unfit for use" and eligible for a full unconditional
| refund, and extend warranties on them to, say, 15 years.
|
| 4. Obviously, make any kind of security research legal and
| protected from intimidation by the companies.
| ozim wrote:
| I branch off company close branch down because it was
| unprofitable - I don't have to support device.
|
| Other approach, only huge companies start making devices
| because medium size companies cannot take the risk of the
| refunds.
|
| Users are worse off, companies are worse off everything with
| the outlined rules is worse. Making law is hard.
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| Agreed. Still, reverse engineering unsupported software or
| hardware should be made legal.
| tacocataco wrote:
| Why can't it enter the public domain by default? Like how
| copyright used to work for media.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > bought digital content
|
| The fundamental problem lies here: you haven't actually
| bought anything useful. You didn't buy content, you bought a
| license, and that license is merely "you might be able to
| view content in a very specific way for an unspecified amount
| of time that is completely at our discretion".
|
| You still have what you bought when they revoke the license,
| it's just in a different and less useful state.
|
| That whole system needs to be crushed into dust to make a
| real difference. Make it so that buying a license to content
| isn't a thing - that you are now actually buying content -
| and all of the things that come with ownership will follow.
|
| But I don't see any viable path to that happening. A sightly
| more possible outcome would be to have a minimum
| standards/requirements for digital content purposes - a set
| of required rights/restrictions/components for any digital
| purchase the all licenses must incorporate or cannot
| compromise on.
| jorvi wrote:
| I've always dreamt of at least the EU and China (yes I know of
| Kylin) mandating libre software for governmental use.
|
| Could you imagine the gigantic amount of flow of money that
| goes into Microsoft enterprise and Office support instead
| flowing into open source? And the amount of bug that amount of
| eyeballs would catch.
|
| Both the Linux desktop and things like LibreOffice would see
| meteoric improvements within the year.
|
| Right now there is already some chances budding (in Spain's
| regional governments, Munich, France's military), it just needs
| to be pulled together into a comprehensive plan and get a good
| push.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| It's an idealism, for sure; but after reading about
| experiments like Hamburg's maybe we'll get there eventually.
|
| But what's far more important (and practical) than mandating
| libre software is mandating libre file formats, and this is
| what we've seen happen somewhat successfully around the
| world: governments requiring official documents to be
| primarily available in PDF/A and/or OpenDocument (c.f.
| OpenOfficeOrg/LibreOffice) instead of (say) MSFT's Office
| OOXML formats.
| em-bee wrote:
| china is actually trying, but it is not easy to get every
| governmental employee to listen and enforce such a change.
|
| in europe on the other hand the issue is entirely political.
| a city switches to linux. when the leading party changes it
| switches back because microsoft promises some benefits like
| jobs or worse kickbacks, or the new leader is simply ignorant
| and actually believes that windows is better.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Germany offered the UK a "test and trace" app during the
| corona virus pandemic. The UK government of course refused,
| because producing an app was an opportunity to divert PS37
| Billion (!) from taxes to their associates. The delay in not
| taking the completed app also would have cost thousands of
| lives.
|
| In short, the first thing you need is people who care about
| their countrymen. People often propose ideas that start from
| an assumption that politicians want to make the World better,
| but the ones in power in the UK at least are more motivated
| by other things: greed for example.
| the-dude wrote:
| Piracy was never stealing to begin with.
| r0ckarong wrote:
| Digital piracy. Piracy was indeed piracy at one time.
| codedokode wrote:
| Piracy still exists.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Yep, shipping containers are stolen straight off ships to
| this very day, or ships are just straight-up hijacked.
| Real, actual piracy.
| xg15 wrote:
| Is there still a lot of piracy with the goal to actually
| steal the goods though? My impression is that current-day
| pirates try to capture _the ships themselves_ and hold
| them for ransom. (Genuinely curious though)
| LoganDark wrote:
| I think so. I haven't read any recent news on it or
| anything, but there are surely still pirates that steal
| individual containers or sets of containers rather than
| trying to hijack the entire ship.
| defrost wrote:
| Individual containers are far far easier to steal
| dockside - seals can be broken and contents taken leaving
| the container and an undiscovered theft, containers can
| be rerouted onto trucks, etc.
|
| Stealing a container on the high seas is damn near
| impossible, doable but a challenge.
|
| The middle ground would be taking under tow floating
| containers that fall off of ships in bad weather - but I
| daresay that comes under salvage.
| bananaowl wrote:
| It's come down to hostage ransom now. Easier to pull some
| people off the boat and hide them in the jungle for
| ransom. The huge vessel they came in on requires
| expertise to crew.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| To be fair, historically, capturing people was likely
| always far more lucrative. The Mediterranean piracy for
| instance far was bigger (by several magnitudes) than the
| much more culturally popular Caribbean piracy.
|
| The Barbary pirates enslaved about 1.25 million people
| between 1530 and 1780 (and it was a massive threat in the
| Middle Ages and ancient times we just don't really have
| reliable figures).
|
| It was such a massive threat that coastal villages all
| but disappeared throughout much of Mediterranean Europe.
| The barbary pirates went as far as Ireland, England or
| even Iceland to murder an enslave people.
|
| This was an issue up until the 1800s (the first foreign
| war the US fought was against Morocco and Tripolitania)
| when the European powers finally took a break from
| fighting each other to do something about their common
| enemies who were terrorizing their subjects for
| centuries.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Piracy is to increase big time. All it takes is a remote-
| autonomous drone canoe with explosives and a protection
| money racket.
| stavros wrote:
| It's not hard to render remote-autonomous drone canoes
| inoperable, with various sorts of remotely-operated
| countermeasures like a signal jammer or a rifle.
| codedokode wrote:
| Civilian ships cannot have weapon, can they? Sea is not
| America.
| amelius wrote:
| Speaking of which, here's a great piracy idea:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535109/
|
| Interpret that how you want ;)
| moffkalast wrote:
| Look at me. I am the captain now.
| user432678 wrote:
| Cool! Then you can fill in crew evaluation journals, file
| the ship maintenance report, negotiate the rates with the
| unions.
| r0ckarong wrote:
| _Puts on my best Hedberg glasses_ and yet, it still was ...
| too.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It's immoral, regardless of what you call it, as it's a
| violation of the social contract.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Monopolies and price-gouging are a violation of the social
| contract.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Firstly they are not (and presupposing the latter claim
| begs the question anyway), and secondly if you think that
| then don't participate in the use of the ill gotten goods.
| Nobody died because they couldn't hear a song or watch a
| movie.
| monkeywork wrote:
| By your logic who died when someone downloaded a non
| approved copy?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| That isn't my logic, but the artist is harmed, for one...
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Artists aren't the ones getting millions in salary
| bonuses each year.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| That is a fallacy. The artists tend to gain with it, for
| one piracy boosts concert sales
| (https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-boosts-concert-ticket-
| sales-...). Box office revenues are hurt but the last
| Hollywood strikes just showed us the corporations
| couldn't care less about the artists.
|
| Only business models that rely on monopolies are harmed.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It wouldn't be a fallacy, it'd just be wrong, except it's
| not wrong, and very basic concept that you can't eat
| public goodwill demonstrates why.
|
| And the entire concept of property is built on monopoly.
| Are you saying you don't believe in property?
| Juliate wrote:
| Are you saying that there's no difference in nature
| between physical and immaterial? Or that intellectual
| property and physical property are the same, with the
| same working principles, and follow the same rules?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Nope!
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| There in fact are. And I think it's silly how people
| always resort to physical metaphors whenever the digital
| realities inconvenience them. And vice versa.
|
| Ditigal media isn't physical, and in this case the
| physical media was on a closed ecosystem and attached to
| a server to stream or at least check in to verify. You
| wouldn't need all this with a plain ol' DVD, but you got
| advantadeges in that that movie played on any PS device
| you logged into.
|
| If you want DRM free digital media, don't buy the above.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| What are you talking about?
|
| A fallacy is a "mistaken belief", so of course it is
| wrong. And you should look more into the concept of free
| riding. For that a good introduction would be The
| philosophers arms episode about free riding.
|
| And what is that about private property? Where did that
| come from? We are talking about different concepts here,
| it is about markets and business models. As long as we
| don't honestly debate how outdated our modes of
| consumption are, piracy would be a natural response to
| artificial scarcity.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| That's not what a fallacy is defined as, and are you
| seriously unable to see how private property is relevant
| to copyright law?
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Rest assured, I am not defending piracy. Pointing out
| flawed reasoning is not the same as defending what it is
| criticising.
|
| My point is that piracy is a natural response to a
| predatory practice. And that is what I think, that the
| current state of how the market is configured is
| anticonsumer, and therefore piracy is a natural response
| to it. It's not a matter of who is right or wrong.
| Everything is less than ideal in this whole affair.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Natural things can be immoral, and the "state of the
| market" has no impact on the morality of piracy. There is
| no justification for lying, misrepresentation, breaking
| your word, or knowingly benefiting from ill gotten gains,
| given the immensely low stakes involved in listening to a
| particular song or watching a particular tv show.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Yes, that is all true and is also valid for the big
| businesses that lie, steal and use their weight to
| exploit society. I am glad we agree!
| jampekka wrote:
| > knowingly benefiting from ill gotten gains
|
| Who decides what is "morally" ill gained? There's quite a
| good case that benefiting without work, e.g. through
| capital gains, is ill gained.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| The social contract does. It would be bad if people
| throughout society just straight up ignored the concepts
| of ownership and copyright law, and all of the things you
| enjoy would not be made. However, by ignoring that and
| pirating it anyway, you're becoming a "free rider" who
| benefits from the contract but doesn't abide by it.
| jampekka wrote:
| The content of the social contract is whatever the
| members of the society accept. If a law is widely broken
| it's not really a part of the contract anymore.
|
| Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of
| its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a
| social contract.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >If a law is widely broken it's not really a part of the
| contract anymore.
|
| so rising physical theft over the pandemic means that
| stealing is legal? School shootings are going to be legal
| in the US overtime? What a horrible model for a social
| contract.
|
| >Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of
| its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a
| social contract.
|
| Sure. But fact is that CEOs do do a lot of work to direct
| companies. We can question if that deserve whatever their
| pay is or their competency, but I hope no one thinks CEOs
| literally sit around doing nothing all day. Can we at
| least agree that burning a company down to the ground
| takes a non-zero effort?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Pointing out flawed reasoning is not the same as
| defending what it is criticising.
|
| pointing out flawed reasoning with flawed reasoning is
| well, a fallacy by your words?
|
| Your link there is an obvious one: it doesn't take into
| account colluding data over if the most pirated stuff
| comes from the most popular artists who have the most
| demand for tours. It doesn't take into account artists
| who can't afford tours (so, most of them) and how too
| much piracy will just get them cut out of the publisher's
| already crappy deal.
|
| >My point is that piracy is a natural response to a
| predatory practice.
|
| okay, I believe piracy would exist even if media was dirt
| cheap and we were in an economic boom. Some people just
| don't value media and if they want to take the time to
| pirate it over spending the money, they would. I'm pretty
| tired of the Just World Fallacy here that people never
| steal out of convenience.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Artists are not harmed, for sure. If you don't have
| money, you wouldn't buy it anyway. By pirating in that
| scenario, you are promoting it, and thus artist benefits.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| You're presuming all pirates only pirate what they
| otherwise would not purchase, which is impossible to
| claim credibly.
| virtual_void wrote:
| And you are presuming that no pirates do by claiming that
| all piracy is immoral.
|
| How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately
| poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be
| transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that
| still immoral?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Not at all, I'm claiming piracy generally is immoral. I'm
| sure you can find exceptions, but the general case is the
| problem.
| virtual_void wrote:
| Without a clear definition of morality that is considered
| universal you cannot make any claims about generality.
|
| There are many examples of piracy where no one loses out
| yet someone does benefit.
|
| Painting such a complex subject with such a broad brush
| makes it seem like we're just talking about your
| particular feelings rather than something universal.
|
| Which is fine, but you're making claims of generality
| without presenting a cogent argument.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Sorry but no, this is not a vague concept that we do not
| share; morality is indeed agreed upon in large strokes,
| by the very virtue of us interacting in this forum, we
| already are implicitly agreeing to a number of shared
| values. For one, you're not calling me insulting names,
| you're accepting I have a point of view, etc.
|
| What I am claiming presumes only that you live in a
| modern society, and therefore you participate in the
| social contract. Given that, what I am saying is then a
| conclusion of that.
| virtual_void wrote:
| You're claiming that all piracy is immoral or breaches a
| social contract. Then you claim exceptions are ok. Thus
| not all piracy is immoral.
|
| I am trying to get to specifics but you keep waving your
| hands about this stuff.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Good thing i didn't claim that all piracy is immoral
| then!
|
| And I've given lots of specifics. It's just not a complex
| concept.
| Fargren wrote:
| I'm probably misreading your argument, because it seems
| inconsistent to me. You are saying that piracy is immoral
| because it causes harm; and that it causes harm because
| in some cases the downloaded would have purchased the
| downloaded media if not for piracy.
|
| I'm very confident that in the majority of cases, people
| who download stuff would not have bought it at any price
| that the publisher would accept, if piracy wasn't an
| option. Which means that by the definition of harm I
| think you are using, the majority of cases would not be
| immoral. It seems to me the immoral cases would be the
| exception.
|
| I guess it makes more sense if you also say that
| consuming something without paying for it is immoral even
| if you would never have paid to consume it. I find it
| hard to agree with that though, as I don't see who's
| harmed.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| I think your confidence is not only unfounded, but
| _awfully_ convenient for someone who stands to benefit
| from the acceptability of piracy to consider.
|
| Besides, "harm" here is not the core of my argument.
| Doing moral _wrong_ is. It is _wrong_ to lie to obtain
| something, and it is _wrong_ to benefit from ill gotten
| gains.
|
| These acts are _wrong_ themselves, regardless of whether
| or not they cause pain directly. This is not a hedonist
| argument, the cause of pain through harm in all or even
| many cases is not necessary for the act to be _wrong_.
| majkinetor wrote:
| It's also wrong to judge others when you know nothing
| about context.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Good thing that's not what's happening!
| majkinetor wrote:
| Further, more educated people have better prospects in
| life, which lead to better personal finances, which lead
| to buying more and pirating less stuff.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately
| poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be
| transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that
| still immoral?
|
| immoral, no. Unethical, yes.
|
| That said, I'm glad libraries of all kinds (lending,
| little free, bookstore giveaways) help give more ethical
| access to such resources. You don't need the latest and
| greatest textbook to obtain knowledge.
|
| With all that said, were talking about deluxe media, not
| foundational knowledge. why does the topic always shift
| to hyperole when talking about a song/movie/game being
| pirated? Are we really comparing pirating The Avengers
| (2012) to finding a way to learn arithmetic?
| leptons wrote:
| >and secondly if you think that then don't participate in
| the use of the ill gotten goods
|
| If a company has a monopoly on something, you cannot just
| go somewhere else to get something equivalent - that's
| the thing about monopolies, in a lot of cases, you simply
| don't have a choice.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| You do have a choice; do not consume the product. You are
| not entitled to art because you want it.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| This idea creates a lot of chance inequality in society
| and excludes many people from good parts of life.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Yes, inequality in society will exist, but such is the
| nature of the concept of property. Not everyone gets to
| access all property.
| leptons wrote:
| This isn't about "art". That's a disingenuous argument.
| What if the monopoly is keeping a live-saving medicine
| prohibitively expensive, because people are just greedy.
| Or some other thing that modern lives are based around -
| _not "art"_. In some cases the choice is buy the thing
| from the monopoly, or die, or be jobless or some other
| kind of calamity. We're not talking about hanging art on
| a wall to look at.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It is literally about art. People need to stop
| exaggerating piracy to life essentials if they want to be
| taken seriously. No, I will not blame a homeless dude who
| grabs a few pieces of food from a grocery store. It can
| be literal life or death.
|
| I can't say the same about someone who "needs to play GTA
| V" (it was already free at some points. So you're not
| just entitled but inefficient in your frugality).
|
| we can take down big pharma first and then worry about
| DRM on media you want to consume. It's not all or
| nothing.
| j_maffe wrote:
| How can a student not participate in the use of the ill-
| gotten goods of textbooks for their studies? For a
| researcher in a developing country for research papers?
| Nobody dies, but a lot of people fall behind. It doesn't
| beg the question when it's so obvious which industries
| have abused copyright law, gained over 100% in profits,
| and manipulated the market to gain absolute control over
| what is offered.
|
| Of course, pirating an indie band's song is a lot more in
| the questionable area (and not done nearly as often,
| since piracy by nature focuses on the more
| necessary/popular products) but that's not what's under
| discussion.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Yes, the piracy is an indie song is precisely what's
| under discussion.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Piracy is so much more than that. If that is your concern
| you should specify it. Even then the morality is still
| debatable but in my view discussion of it is a
| distraction from the bigger issues.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| And in my view, the casual nature of piracy enabling the
| breakdown of the social contract is one of the many
| things tearing society apart, so to me it's pretty
| important.
| justinclift wrote:
| > to me it's pretty important.
|
| What other things do you feel are "tearing society
| apart", and how important are they to you compared to
| this?
| atq2119 wrote:
| Societies are usual torn apart from the top, because
| that's where there are people with power to make
| impactful decisions.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| If people break a law so easily, it can't be part of a
| social contract, because the people don't support it.
|
| IP, and specifically copyright are fairly new legal
| additions. The redefinition of time limited copyright to
| something extending past normal lifetimes especially so.
| EULAs and DRM enforcing copyright beyond book-style
| possibilities is new, and ongoing as we speak.
|
| I'd say we see the public at large rejecting part of the
| law because it is not consistent with the social contract
| in their heads.
|
| Powerfull entities trying to force the law outside the
| social contract's support is working, but not completely,
| and that's what's tearing society apart.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Except people don't stick to pirating old works, a _huge_
| "scene" exists to get the latest and greatest episodes
| and movies out to the masses via piracy. You bring up an
| exception, which _may_ be different! But it is an
| exception. The general rule of piracy is that it 's
| immoral, however.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Are you sure you're replying to the right comment?
| Nothing I said promotes pirating some categories only.
|
| The line of reasoning is that copyright falls outside
| current social contracts. So the general rule of piracy
| is that it is illegal but amoral. Morality of copyright
| violations should be determined by other criteria.
| gary_0 wrote:
| A poor kid who can't participate in culture arguably
| endures more harm than whatever harm might be caused by
| copyright infringement.
| vasco wrote:
| > Nobody dies
|
| Yes they do. Copyright and patent trade agreements kill
| and they kill a lot people.
|
| If anyone is interested in the topic, a good first entry
| point paper to understand how this works and impacts:
|
| > "What is the impact of intellectual property rules on
| access to medicines? A systematic review"
|
| > "With very few exceptions, the articles in this review
| found that the introduction of patents following
| implementation of TRIPS rules and pharmaceutical-related
| TRIPS-plus IP provisions are associated with an increase
| in drug prices, consumer welfare losses and increased
| costs to consumers of pharmaceuticals and national
| governments."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9013034/
|
| This paper alone should probably get you depressed, but
| if that gets you going, read "Information Feudalism" by
| Peter Drahos, then you'll understand how people in power
| truly have no respect for human lives in developing
| countries.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >How can a student not participate in the use of the ill-
| gotten goods of textbooks for their studies?
|
| rent from the library, ask for a friend's copy, take out
| more loans.
|
| >For a researcher in a developing country for research
| papers?
|
| contact other researchers and ask directly. Maybe they
| can also share some stuff with you, especially if they
| are the author.
|
| These are speedbumps not roadblocks. People can and have
| gotten around them even with little resources.
| Universities obviously have these resources, researchers
| generally want to encourage other researchers (even if
| only to validate their own research).
|
| >Nobody dies, but a lot of people fall behind
|
| Yes, an unfortunatle reality of all life. If I had to
| choose, free media is not even in the top 20 things I'd
| try to make more accessible to such people, though.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Violating a social contract is not necessarily immoral, in
| the same way that breaking the law is not necessarily
| immoral.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| In this case it's clearly immoral however, as the stakes
| for the pirate are so incredibly low.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Stakes have nothing to do with morality
| andybak wrote:
| "clearly"...
|
| That's the bit we're disputing. It's not "clear" and it's
| not "obvious".
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Then dispute it. I'm claiming it is, and giving lots of
| reasons. Plenty of angles to approach this, for you.
| andybak wrote:
| I did in my other comment.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Then why make two?
| Juliate wrote:
| A more specific, practical and workable discussion than
| questioning the morality of it is on the perspective of
| how (and why) the law should balance, in the short and in
| the long term those interests that should be converging:
| artists, general public, production/distribution/rights
| management companies.
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| > clearly immoral
|
| I hope you do realize that it's your own opinion.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Nope, it is my conclusion based on a set of priors we
| almost certainly share.
| orwin wrote:
| I'm not for or against but:
|
| First, I never violated a license agreement I signed by
| buying a product.
|
| Also, my moral isn't yours, clearly. In my mind, sharing
| information is moral, withholding it is immoral. I think
| there is degree to this (clearly a State, or government
| officials, or state agents withholding non-vital
| information is extremely immoral, whereas it's less
| immoral to do so for a company), but clearly, I think of
| proprietary code, unshared patents and copyright of a
| song or artistic creation immoral.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Nobody is talking about a license agreement, that's not
| what the social contract is.
|
| And you very clearly benefit from all those things you
| claim are immoral, and the systems that brought them
| about, so I find myself skeptical to your claim they're
| bad. It seems more like you disapprove of your inability
| to satisfy your sense of entitlement. After all, if you
| dislike these concepts so much, why do you want the very
| things they've produced?
| orwin wrote:
| What? Sorry I think I wasn't very good expressing my
| opinion, art is different than it's support. Hopefully my
| comment on your sibling comment will clarify.
|
| Listen, the only social contract I have is respecting the
| laws of my country, and the contracts I agreed to sign.
| No laws in my country prevents me from downloading
| whatever piece of art or content I want. None. I just
| cannot share it outside of friends and family. Which I
| don't.
|
| Also, I think I've download 3 pieces I didn't have a
| license for: Skyrim, Mass effect 1 and 2. I now own them
| all on steam. So my sense of entitlement is great, thank
| you. I was never into TV or movies, and my father
| digitalized his 500 CDs and probably trice that number
| from the public library, so even early 2010s when I was a
| broke student, I never had to find download links for the
| music I wanted to listen at the time (now I find out that
| this isn't enough and just download the music from
| YouTube).
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Sorry but no, you _are_ part of the social contract, as
| it doesn 't require you to "sign" it. It's not that kind
| of contract. It's the set of expectations you have for
| the people around you to behave in a way that's conducive
| to interaction, and in exchange you are expected to act
| in kind.
|
| When you pirated those works, you committed an immoral
| act, as the owner of the work did not give you permission
| to access those works. Broke students don't get to play
| games for free just because they want to. You're not
| entitled to whatever you want, especially when the
| alternative is that you are in no way harmed. You would
| have survived, thrived even, if you didn't have those
| games.
| orwin wrote:
| When you talk about the work owner, are you talking about
| the buyer who released it with the crack, or are you
| talking about the work producer?
|
| Because I had the permission from the first, and a bit
| earlier when I bought oblivion in a second hand game
| store, the work producer didn't gave me permission
| either.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > In my mind, sharing information is moral, withholding
| it is immoral.
|
| I am quite certain you do not really hold this position,
| otherwise you would almost certainly pulbish your real
| name, home address, bank account balance and other
| information on your profile. Withholding all this
| information would be quite immoral.
|
| Also, software and art are not "information", they are a
| separate thing. And copyright and patents don't prevent
| anyone from disclosing said "information", on the
| contrary. They allow artists and software companies to
| share this information without worrying that others will
| profit from their work.
|
| Everyone imagines that Disney or Microsoft wouldn't exist
| in a world without copyright, but the opposite is true.
| They would freely copy any competitor while using their
| marketing and sales teams to convince everyone to give
| them (most of) the profits from their work. It's _a lot_
| easier for Disney to make money off your original
| screenplay than it is for you to make money off Mickey
| Mouse.
| orwin wrote:
| I do think in a moral world, every information ought to
| be publicly accessible. My bank account information
| should be available for anyone that ask themselves how
| much money I have access to.
|
| And I'm not equating art and information. I agree that
| art have the right to be reserved for the artist. I
| disagree that the recordings themselves have the same
| rights. And especially the 'master recording' concept
| that can prevent an artist to play his own songs on
| stage. I'm on Swift's side against Scooter Braun
| basically.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Discovery recently deleted any already purchased shows
| and series on PlayStation without a refund.
|
| It is not immoral to download content illegally when the
| alternative is a revocable digital token being sold
| fraudulently.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Except that is not the alternative, is it? Couldn't you
| just not watch the show?
| wolfendin wrote:
| But I paid to be able to watch the show. Sony made a
| deliberate action to deprive me of that ability, should I
| not be made whole?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Maybe, but that's not for you to arbitrarily decide on
| your own.
| justinclift wrote:
| So, instead of "arbitrarily" deciding that on their
| own... how should they decide that "properly"?
|
| By officially asking for new Terms of Service maybe?
| itsboring wrote:
| Probably a multi-year class action suit where everyone
| who got screwed over eventually gets $0.79 for their
| troubles while lawyers on both sides get a fat payday for
| creating exactly nothing. That's what this precious
| "social contract" gets you, and I piss on it.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Law suit, but generally arbitration of some kind (the
| conceptual kind, not the legal term). Part of the social
| contract is that we don't resolve our own disputes beyond
| a certain level of seriousness, we allow neutral third
| parties to do so. Otherwise we'd have fights in the
| streets and mob justice.
| justinclift wrote:
| > we allow neutral third parties to do so.
|
| That hasn't been working out so well lately, thus the
| whole "alternative methods" thing being pretty popular in
| some circles these days.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It works a hell of a lot better than "alternative
| methods" from a moral standpoint, however. The reality is
| that people have just become more okay hurting others.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think they mean, you could have neither bought nor
| pirated the content, knowing that the terms Discovery is
| offering are very one-sided (I am presuimg the license
| agreement explicitly stipulated that they were allowed to
| do what they did).
|
| Either way, when one party breaks their contract, you sue
| them in a court of law. You don't seek remedies on your
| own.
| wolfendin wrote:
| Given how much I've had to scroll through this thread to
| get to this comment, it's evidently not clear at all.
| andybak wrote:
| It's a violation of copyright which has been around for a lot
| less time than "th social contract" however you define it.
|
| So - prior to the existence of copyright - was it immoral?
|
| And how do laws related to fair-use etc affect it's morality?
| "Immoral" implies something fairly clear-cut and universal,
| not the kind of thing where there are complex provisions
| defining a range of exceptions, differing between
| jurisdictions.
|
| In summary - you are massively oversimplifying a complex
| topic so I'd have to disagree almost entirely with your
| formulation.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Immoral is in no way clear cut, but in this case it is as
| universal as the agreement to abide by copyright rules are
| at the time of the exchange between the licensee and owner.
|
| The violation of the social contract comes when you agree
| to terms you intend to our letter decide to violate, or in
| the case of the consumer pirate, when your benefit from the
| ill gotten gains of the person you know to have deceitfully
| obtained to copied work from its owner.
| orwin wrote:
| So it's immoral for the license owner to share it, not
| for a random person to download it?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It's immoral for the person who made the implicit
| agreement (via the social contract and the presumption of
| the appointment of copyright law) with the owner claiming
| they wouldn't share it, and then proceeding to share it.
| elashri wrote:
| I don't think "made" is really true here. I did not make
| the choice to be born in this particular country with
| this particular social contract. And the copyright law
| for most part get established before I was even born and
| I had no say in that.
|
| I get the point of social contract, but most people do
| not form it because it was established before in most
| cases. Not to mention that this assume you live in a
| democracy and that social contract is not of sort (it is
| what it is or we will kill and prison you).
|
| So I don't think it is appropriate to make it appear like
| this was a choice everyone makes. It is not immoral to
| violate social contact (slavery was social contract but
| the moral thing was to oppose it -just example not
| comparison-)
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Frankly, too bad. You benefit every waking moment from
| the social contract, and in particular the social
| contract is _exactly_ what made these works you love so
| much available in the first place. If you don 't agree to
| the social contract, you can opt out by either leaving
| society generally, or at the very least not consuming the
| works that were created as a result of its existence.
|
| The very fact that you pirate the work demonstrates you
| buy into the social contract at least enough to benefit.
| And if you benefit without contributing/consenting,
| you're considered a "free rider".
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > I did not make the choice to be born in this particular
| country with this particular social contract.
|
| So we're shifting to "taxation is theft" now? Maybe one
| day we can explore the cosmos and truly settle our own
| land (given that 99%+ of earth's land has been claimed by
| some social contract). Alas, born too early.
|
| >So I don't think it is appropriate to make it appear
| like this was a choice everyone makes. It is not immoral
| to violate social contact (slavery was social contract
| but the moral thing was to oppose it -just example not
| comparison-)
|
| hyperbolic metaphors aside: sure, if you oppose the
| social contract and your government allows it, try to
| change it. But I think "make digital purchases ownership"
| is a very small tree to bark up in modern society.
| justinclift wrote:
| Cool. So no worries about other family members (aka not
| party to the agreement) being the ones to share it with
| the world then. Naturally doing so without the original
| family member knowing about it.
|
| All good then. :)
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Sorry but no, this won't work as you'd know the goods
| were gained through deception (since that's the only way
| the goods would be made available to you).
| justinclift wrote:
| Sorry, but no to your no. You're trying to blindly force
| things into a shape they don't fit. :)
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Nope, it's actually super straightforward; piracy is
| immoral, as it relies on deception to exist. You must lie
| in order to obtain the copy of the work in the first
| place, or you must benefit from someone else's lie. This
| is a violation of the social contract and is therefore
| immoral.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I mean, that's why they argued it into law. You don't
| have to agree to the contract of a store to steal from
| it, because it's a local, state, and federal law to not
| steal goods you gotta pay for. Your family members will
| probably get a warning at first (because litigation is
| expensive, warnings are cheap), and then escalate from
| there because there are laws against it.
| franciscop wrote:
| > as universal as the agreement to abide by copyright
| rules are at the time of the exchange between the
| licensee and owner
|
| So are you saying that a provider "selling" some content
| and then _removing it from your library_ is as bad as you
| pirating it in the first place?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Perhaps, but what's more likely is they asked for that
| right during the initial sale, and you just didn't
| notice.
|
| Besides the remediation is not to pirate the copy back,
| that's vigilantism. You would need to find a way to prove
| they took something they shouldn't have.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > Besides the remediation is not to pirate the copy back,
| that's vigilantism. You would need to find a way to prove
| they took something they shouldn't have.
|
| That seems unbalanced to me. Why is the onus on the
| customer to prove that, rather than they just pirate it
| and the onus is on the seller to prove that they took
| something they shouldn't have?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| So guilty until proven innocent then? You see zero
| problems with that?
| resonious wrote:
| If someone says "I spent a lot of resources making this
| digital content. please pay before consuming it" and you
| consume it without paying, then that seems kind of like a
| social contract violation to me (though I may be using an
| overly broad definition of social contract).
|
| Of course, per the article it seems the sellers are often
| turning around and saying "hey I know I sold you this, but
| now I'm going to change/revoke it remotely" which is also a
| breach of social contract. So an eye for an eye I guess.
| TheMode wrote:
| What if I say "I spent a lot of time on my appearance, if
| you look at me you should pay". Do I have the right to
| bill anybody making eye contact?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Contrived and distinct situation; you _agree_ to the
| terms when you license the song.
| TheMode wrote:
| So if we encouraged people to make such terms to help
| with their end of month, looking at people would become
| immoral?
|
| Pieces of paper/text shouldn't be able to dictate what is
| moral outside of common sense. The world I describe above
| would become a worse place for everybody.
|
| Here, the problem is that the artist put a lot of time
| into making the song because there is the expectation of
| that term and the ability to extract money out of it.
| Without this expectation, none of it would feel immoral
| for either of both side.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Nope, you keep forgetting the key ingredient; the
| "lookers" would need to _agree_ to this arrangement in
| the first place. None of these things are foisted upon
| people without their consent, as you keep trying to
| claim. You _agree_ to terms when you buy a copy of a
| work, both implicit and explicit, that forbit its further
| distribution.
| TheMode wrote:
| It could be part of Meta ToS. Saying that all your
| friends are allowed to ask payment for eye contact.
| Hopefully you read it already.
|
| Consent is a really hard thing to guarantee. You have
| already lost. There is no moral stance to have here, its
| all made up agreement.
| paavope wrote:
| If I download a song from, let's say, The Pirate Bay, I
| never agree to any terms.
|
| Futher, it's debatable whether clicking "I agree" on a
| pages-long EULA where there is no realistic expectation
| that people actually read the text, is really agreement.
| aranelsurion wrote:
| I also take issue with "you've agreed to the contract"
| arguments in general, if the contract is between one
| individual vs. an entire organization, or usually
| collection of organizations.
|
| There's such a high power imbalance there that I find it
| intellectually dishonest to say that it is a free-willing
| contract between two entities. In my decades of Internet
| use, I haven't once set a single clause on a contract
| I've "agreed to" with a service. Those agreements were
| always even more one-sided than Treaty of Versailles, and
| the upper limit of how far they'd push was almost always
| what the local regulations permitted.
|
| Therefore I ask, can you exist on this digital world
| without ever accepting one EULA in your life? or moving
| the goal post: can you exist on this world without
| accepting one-sided agreements, like, all the time? It's
| not an agreement if you had no real choice to begin with.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It's just as immoral to steal from Big MegaCorp as it is
| to steal from Joe Random, especially when what you're
| stealing is entirely frivolous and not in any way
| required for your life or even happiness.
|
| The insidious nature of piracy is that it's so completely
| unnecessary. There are no "but I'm starving" kind of
| arguments to be had here.
| TheMode wrote:
| You are acting like entertainment exists in a vacuum. You
| go about your day, consume some movie, then go back to
| your life as if nothing happened.
|
| In practice, new entertainment entices more people into
| consuming it. For example lets say your group of friend
| suddenly became huge fan of some unknown show, you didn't
| see it but they keep talking about it for days. You then
| notice that it costs $500. You indeed have the choice to
| not watch it, its not like you ever felt the need to
| before it has been mentioned to you, but won't you?
|
| This example is a bit excessive but these kind of events
| happen all ever the case for entertainment that cost a
| fraction of it. The problem is that it stacks up.
|
| As for your immoral accusation, its perfectly fine if you
| think this way, but I also believe that it is perfectly
| fine to think the opposite way. The only things companies
| can lose from piracy are potential sales, and ultimately
| if people aren't willing to pay for it I believe that it
| is fine for the company to shut down. Why should they be
| forced to pay for something they can access without
| causing any harm?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| for many, it does exist in a vacuum. Others may place
| more weight into it.
|
| >For example lets say your group of friend suddenly
| became huge fan of some unknown show, you didn't see it
| but they keep talking about it for days. You then notice
| that it costs $500. You indeed have the choice to not
| watch it, its not like you ever felt the need to before
| it has been mentioned to you, but won't you?
|
| sure, life is all about compromises. I had plenty of rich
| friends take things for granted in grade school that my
| parent literally could not afford. I probably "lost" some
| rich friends because I could not engage in such
| actiities. Such is life.
|
| I grew up not expecting to get everything I wanted when I
| wanted it. Practicing restraint and prioritizing my needs
| over my wants is a core part of my character. So hearing
| people act like they need to watch Game of Thrones but
| can't pay HBO or whatever falls on deaf ears. I simply
| never watched Game of Thrones, life did move on.
|
| >As for your immoral accusation, its perfectly fine if
| you think this way, but I also believe that it is
| perfectly fine to think the opposite way.
|
| I care more about hypocrisy than morals, and a lot of the
| "pro-consumer" arguments come off a hypocritical. They
| compare it to people breaking into your house but are
| happy in most other contexts treating the digital commons
| as different from a physical one, despite that cost of
| the commons coming from some often non-government entity.
|
| And honestly, it's just the dishonesty that bothers me
| the most. Some just don't want to say they do bad things.
| At least own up to it. I pirate, sometimes I just don't
| care. I'm not a good person. There, easy.
|
| >and ultimately if people aren't willing to pay for it I
| believe that it is fine for the company to shut down. Why
| should they be forced to pay for something they can
| access without causing any harm?
|
| logistically, the company shutting down hurts the people
| who caused it the least. So I do feel bad. CEO has a
| million dollar eject button and the rest of the airplane
| of underpaid artists are stuck in a nosedive. Maybe I
| couldn't save it, but I at least don't want to say I
| didn't chip in.
|
| morally, a company that produces value that has all of
| what is valued stolen is a downer.
| TheMode wrote:
| > sure, life is all about compromises. I had plenty of
| rich friends take things for granted in grade school that
| my parent literally could not afford. I probably "lost"
| some rich friends because I could not engage in such
| actiities. Such is life.
|
| Sometimes you indeed have to cope, not everything can be
| accessible. But in the case of digital data it is
| definitively possible, and people are independently
| distributing torrents, not like movie studios have to
| distribute their own work for free.
|
| More digital piracy would also overall mean less
| production, and so less expectation from consumers, and
| less barriers for the people who cannot afford everything
| (or anything really). Going back to a more "organic rate"
| of story telling. Stories have always existed after all.
|
| > And honestly, it's just the dishonesty that bothers me
| the most. Some just don't want to say they do bad things.
| At least own up to it. I pirate, sometimes I just don't
| care. I'm not a good person. There, easy.
|
| Maybe that I am a bad person too then. But its a pretty
| quick reasoning, am I really to blame for downloading
| bytes over the internet? Why couldn't you blame all the
| creators for expecting this sort of income? am I to blame
| if their work only has value when imposed?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| You know the person who you downloaded from did, which is
| then benefitting from ill gotten gains, and also immoral.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| was forced into the agreement based on laws i never
| agreed with. anyway, y'all are talking about ethics not
| laws so your point is invalid.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Nobody here is discussing laws except as an outline of
| expectations of the social contract.
| joshspankit wrote:
| In a morally-equitable world, "I spent a lot of resources
| making this content. please pay before consuming it"
| means the artist and/or the artist's team spent time
| honing their craft, money on food and housing, and some
| more money on materials.
|
| In the current world it's rarely like this. Now it's "we
| as a production conglomerate loaned an artist 500k to
| produce some content that we expect to make a profit on,
| made them use our very expensive in-house resources (at
| MSRP), and we pay them $0.03 for every $1 we make until
| they pay off that loan".
|
| The perception those conglomerates want to spread is that
| there is a direct social contract between you and the
| artist who's work you are pirating, but the real contract
| is between you and the conglomerate themselves. Even if
| (and usually especially if) that conglomerate screws over
| the artist.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| doesn't cost anything to write a book
| afiori wrote:
| It is also immoral to delete bought content from users'
| devices
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| if you want to be pedantic, they can't delete it off our
| device. They just delete it off their server and then when
| you phone home to verify your movie they can say "sorry we
| can't play this".
|
| Or at least, that's the streaming way. If this was a
| digital download with on need to phone home it will in fact
| be stuck on your PS3/4 unless they force you to update to
| do anything with your PS3/4. From there they can probably
| delete it during a patch. but the PS3 is well past EoL for
| that.
| virtual_void wrote:
| There is no singular conception of The Social Contract, nor
| indeed of morality.
|
| You're making a point about how you feel about it without
| presenting an argument.
|
| The discussion of harms or lack of harm from piracy has been
| raging for a long time. It's not going to be solved by
| appealing to the idea of right and wrong. It's not universal
| in this instance which is why the argument continues.
|
| You would have a point if everyone agrees it is wrong but
| some people do it anyway. However, that is not the case.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It's extremely well understood that the social contract
| covers "don't lie to get stuff", which is what pirates do
| to obtain the copy they then make available, as the social
| contract presumes those engaged in a sale of a copy of a
| work won't turn around and give it away for free.
|
| Pirates are thus "free riders" to the social contract.
| virtual_void wrote:
| Your argument is based on the terms of a conceptual
| social contract which is ill defined and not universal.
|
| You seem convinced that your system of values are the
| same set everyone else has. That doesn't make for a
| useful argument.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It's actually very important that we agree on the
| structure of the social contract, and this is not "my"
| system at all, but a description of the system we both
| rely on to not get stabbed in the street for our lunch
| money.
| virtual_void wrote:
| Are you are relying on that terminology because you
| believe piracy to actually be stealing? Depriving a
| person of something they already own.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Nope, stealing involves depravation.
| virtual_void wrote:
| Then which specific thing in your conception of the
| social contact are you equating piracy with?
|
| The post states that piracy isn't stealing and you agree.
|
| There must be some other thing in your mind that is
| equivalent.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It's called trespass, I believe the legal phrase is
| "trespass of chattel" but IANALY.
| virtual_void wrote:
| No, that tort specifically relates to depriving someone
| of, otherwise damaging their property.
|
| We've agreed it's not stealing. We've agreed that not all
| piracy is immoral, for some definition of immoral.
|
| I think we can agree that this specific tort does not
| apply.
|
| Which specific thing in the social contract, some simple
| verb such as "stealing" are you equating piracy with.
| Then we'll have something concrete to discuss I think.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| We don't have to discuss anything if you don't like, you
| replied to me.
|
| Also that's not what trespass means. You don't "deprive"
| someone of their land when you walk on it without
| permission, and you don't "deprive" someone of their song
| when you pirate it.
| virtual_void wrote:
| Apologies, I wasn't suggesting i was closing down the
| conversation. I am trying to find a specific thing in the
| social contract that you feel is violated. We agree it's
| not stealing it seems.
|
| Re trespass, that's not what the specific tort you
| referred to means. A chattel is a moveable form of
| property. You're talking about the colloquial version of
| trespass. Happy to talk about that conception of it.
|
| Is the idea of trespass the specific thing you feel is
| being violated in the social contract? If not, what is?
| Jochim wrote:
| There's nothing social about intellectual property law.
| It's been shaped by and to the benefit of corporations
| who would have us paying royalties to the descendants of
| the man who "invented" the wheel if they had their way.
|
| It goes entirely against how humans think, strangling
| creativity and innovation. An artist is harmed far more
| when they're forced to spend years in court, debating
| whether their chord progression is too similar to a song
| written by someone who's been dead for 50 years.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Couldn't disagree more; IP is the only way we could have
| found to properly compensate creators for the value of
| their work. To throw out intellectual property is to
| throw out art itself.
| justinclift wrote:
| Hmmm, how much real world exposure to art do you actually
| have?
|
| Have you ever actually published anything for others to
| purchase?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Lots and yes.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/PJSTFzhs1O4
| etaweb wrote:
| Intellectual property is not all about arts and extends
| beyond it.
|
| > To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art
| itself.
|
| Art is older than intellectual property.
|
| "To throw out intellectual property" wouldn't stop
| anybody to continue making art, it would at most
| challenge the way we build an economy around it.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Throwing out intellectual property absolutely would stop
| the vast majority of the art made today from being made.
| We've had an _explosion_ of art once we entered into an
| understanding that the creators of a work have control
| over how that work is used. Getting rid of that would
| kill film, television, and music. Would people still make
| these things? Yes. But not nearly at the quality or
| quantity we see today.
| monkeywork wrote:
| >IP is the only way we could have found to properly
| compensate creators for the value of their work. To throw
| out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.
|
| Umm you do realize that some of the greatest works of art
| were created LONG before "IP" was a thing right? The
| patronage system did pretty well....
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| If those are all the greatest works, why does anyone
| _bother_ pirating movies and TV? Oh right, because they
| 're _infinitely_ more entertaining and cost millions to
| make.
| Voultapher wrote:
| Based on all the comments you left in this thread, I'm
| not sure you really want to engage this topic earnestly.
|
| I think you are making the mistake of applying social
| contracts that can work well on a person to person level
| to person vs corporation situations. With the latter, one
| party has way more leverage than the other. On top of
| that corporations have proven again and again that they
| will mislead, lie to you and abuse you to the extent
| permissible by law, or even more if they think it's
| lucrative to so. On a person to person level that would
| be a very toxic relationship. They certainly didn't
| uphold classical inter-personal social contracts, so why
| should you?
|
| Genuine question, did you fully read the article before
| commenting here?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| I not only read the article, but I am familiar with
| Doctorow's positions on this issue, and am fairly well
| versed in ethics.
|
| The problem here is probably that most folks can't
| separate what "is" and what "ought" to be. For example
| you're discussing how corporations behave despite it
| being wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not
| piracy is immoral. The argument is one of "oughts" and
| you're trying to talk in terms of "is", despite the
| gaping crevasse separating the two of them (Hume's
| Guillotine).
|
| This isn't where ethics is ambiguous or debated; it's
| very obviously immoral to pirate, for a whole host of
| reasons, some of which I've already mentioned. From there
| you surely can concoct scenarios where a baby would die
| if it doesn't hear a Metallica album or whatever, but the
| general point will stand.
| Voultapher wrote:
| I see your point. Based on your earlier replies it was
| not clear to me you were talking about the abstract
| concept in an unrealistic world. Might help to make that
| more clear.
|
| In some kind of perfect world there would be no need for
| violence. Yet we live in a complex and ambiguous world,
| where the widely accepted moral view that killing is a
| bad thing is sometimes the "right" thing to do. Or would
| you argue the Ukrainian people should just roll over
| because the social contract says killing is bad? My point
| is, I don't see how the notion that piracy is bad in a
| world we don't live in helps this discussion. To me it
| feels more like an argument one could use to demand
| people stop doing this immoral thing now.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| No, what? This is not about an ideal world, it's about
| what ought to be in this one. Murder is wrong, stealing
| is wrong, and piracy is wrong, same kind of thinking
| (though hopefully it is obvious that one is worse than
| the other).
| Tryk wrote:
| I don't know what working definition of social contract
| you are using but classically the social contract is a
| set of rules between individuals and a state. Crucially
| whenever these rules change, e.g when DRM modifies the
| idea of ownership to a weak form of lending, the
| individuals are entitled to diverge from the contract.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| No, the social contract is a philosophical concept where
| people agree implicitly to behave a certain way in order
| to maximize the value of interaction. Part of that
| involves consenting to governance, but that is merely one
| aspect of the social contract.
| cuu508 wrote:
| It seems to me the media companies are violating the
| social contract here, and the "pirates" are merely
| working around that issue.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| If so, that'd be vigilante justice and still immoral.
| colinsane wrote:
| my friend had some old Cowboy Bebop DVDs he got from a
| garage sale way back. i bought them off him, and then
| visited a 2nd friend's place to rip them using her DVD
| reader, and having done so showed the series to a 3rd
| friend group next time i visited them. it was a hit, and
| after i left one of the friends wanted to watch the bonus
| features. so i gave him access to the FTP server i keep
| all my media on and he copied it off there.
|
| by the law as media companies would wish us to understand
| it, this is piracy. but when and by whom was a contract
| broken during this chain of events? i shared the content
| with my friend, but my purchase of the DVD wasn't
| conditional upon any agreement not to, so it couldn't
| have been me who broke a contract. was the contract
| broken by the person at the garage sale who sold the DVD
| without verifying that the recipient wouldn't pass it on
| to another recipient who would then duplicate it? if so,
| doesn't that same logic imply the DVD manufacturer broke
| a contract? if this is how you imagine the contract to
| function, it would seem the existence of piracy
| _anywhere_ in this chain means that the entire industry
| is criminal.
|
| this isn't a hypothetical, btw. there actually is a Bebop
| DVD out there with a chain of custody that complex
| (actually more complex by now).
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is a clear expectation in law for at least 100-200
| years now that owning a copy of a piece of media doesn't
| allow you to copy or perform it. This is by no means a
| new concept, and you broke the social contract the moment
| you copied the DVD. This may not be printed on every book
| and DVD, but it is very clear - you own the physical
| copy, not the text.
|
| There are other gray areas related to property and
| copyright. This is not one of them.
| colinsane wrote:
| sure, i can identify the moment in this chain when
| copyright _law_ may have been violated. it 's the
| contract part i'm caught up with though: law is a thing
| which exists whether i agree to it or not, but contracts
| are agreements opted into. and i can't identify any
| moment where i reneged on any agreement, implied (the
| friend i bought that DVD from knew me well enough to
| understand what that meant) or otherwise.
| atq2119 wrote:
| Your dates are off by more than a century though. Initial
| copyright terms were barely more than a decade. Cowboy
| Bebop would have been fair game.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Duration of copyright is separate from the principle. The
| current durations of copyright are obviously crazy. But
| that doesn't mean we should just do away with copyright
| entirely.
| haunter wrote:
| Where I can read this social contract?
| majkinetor wrote:
| Exactly. People are overthinking this in vain. There is
| nothing you can do about it, take it as a fact of life - as
| long as there are digital goods, there will be piracy. Take
| this into account, do not fight against it.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| A very "is" argument, but the conversation around
| morality concerns whether you "ought" to.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Glad you asked: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-
| moral/
| Tryk wrote:
| Hobbes was not the last (nor the first) person who
| thought about the social contract. As you put it in
| another comment:
|
| Allow me to blow your mind
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-
| contempo...
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| So you understand now what makes piracy so
| uninterestingly immoral? So clearly a violation then,
| enacted by free riders who wish only to benefit from the
| effort and concession of others?
| Jochim wrote:
| > enacted by free riders who wish only to benefit from
| the effort and concession of others?
|
| You mean like doing something once and then expecting to
| be paid for it in perpetuity?
|
| Expecting to be paid for the efforts of others, decades
| after their death?
|
| Redefining the legal system in order to prevent others
| from carrying out the, distribution?
|
| I'm much more concerned about those free riders than a
| teen with no way to pay for digital goods, someone who
| couldn't afford it, or someone who'd like to keep the
| things they pay for.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| If that's what the owner of the work wants, that's what
| they're entitled to. It's _theirs_.
|
| Besides, the concern isn't pirating The Sound of Music.
| The concern is pirating Game of Thrones or Euphoria.
| That's what's being discussed here. You can obviously
| find exceptions to the general rule of "piracy is
| immoral" but it is the general rule.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| > his substantive conclusions have served mostly as a
| foil for the development of more palatable philosophical
| positions.
|
| Doesn't sound like he's held in high regard, except
| possibly to take a position to debate _against_.
|
| And then there's this ...
|
| https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/525
| colinsane wrote:
| > social contract
|
| 1. a contract is just an abstraction over a commitment to
| give it more salability. if every contract violation is a sin
| then so is me committing to meet you for dinner tonight but
| canceling because i'm feeling under the weather.
|
| 2. show me this contract. where/when did i sign it, and was i
| under duress when i did so?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| No, that's not how the social contract works. You "sign" it
| by being born into the society where it applies, and you
| refuse it by leaving that society.
| Juliate wrote:
| That's a very peculiar understanding of what a contract
| is, and even of what the ill-named implicit "social
| contract" is.
|
| There's the law, that applies upon everyone in a society.
| There are treaties that try to make laws from countries
| work together.
|
| No morality in that, just practical, time-tested and
| updated (and updatable) rules & codes. No need to leave a
| society to refuse and change its laws, hopefully.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| My man allow me to blow your mind:
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/
|
| This is neither my idea, nor is it peculiar in any way.
| It's a term used to describe the agreement we all commit
| to in order to interact in a shared environment.
| colinsane wrote:
| great, now read his counterpart, Rousseau. these are both
| just stories, and in as much as their conclusions rely
| upon their assumptions about the "state of nature"
| they're both flawed: with every decade anthropologists
| unearth more of human history and find more evidence that
| neither portrayal comes close to representing the actual
| ways in which humans interacted at any point before or
| distant from the English society we and they knew.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Uh, no. The social contract is not a "story" any more
| than supply/demand is a "story". It's an attempt to
| explain how something works, with a great deal of rigor
| and reasoning supporting its ideas.
| Juliate wrote:
| That was not my point. :)
|
| I know what this is used for. It's still ill-named (you
| don't sign it, it would be a "de facto" instead), and
| still debatable a theory (which states that in an ideal,
| invented state of nature, without such a contract
| enforced by an authority, violence would be the natural
| relation between individuals).
|
| There's more (especially since the times of Hobbes) to
| describe how societies have functioned/could/should
| function.
|
| Social contract theory is not much more solid than the
| homo economicus one: it has its points, and its flaws.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Would it blow your mind to know that this is the
| equivalent of linking a podcast?
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Are podcasts peer reviewed?
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| How do you peer review an opinion
| colinsane wrote:
| then i very clearly participate in this contract only on
| conditions of duress. i lack the means to "leave society"
| and exit this supposed contract without risking
| starvation or death from the elements: literal threats to
| my life. no court would enforce a literal contract
| entered into upon such conditions.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| None of this frees you from the contract, I'm afraid.
| Besides, it costs nothing to live as a hermit in the
| woods! But you probably quite like the benefits of the
| contract, e.g. all of society, so I bet you'll stick
| around.
| colinsane wrote:
| > Besides, it costs nothing to live as a hermit in the
| woods
|
| if i formally opt out of this "contract" (i.e. renounce
| my citizenship), then there are no woods i can recede to
| without being considered an illegal alien.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| That's a practical problem and a flaw in society, not a
| flaw in the concept.
| mopsi wrote:
| Given how few people among the general public ever cross
| paths with copyright law, and how common copyright
| infringements are in practice (eg posting a photo of a
| movie poster on Instagram or sharing a meme based on a
| shot from a TV show), I don't find your appeal to social
| contract very convincing.
|
| Many copyright provisions survive only because too few
| people are affected by them in practice. For example,
| publishing a photo of Eiffel tower at night is illegal in
| France, because the illumination is a work of art still
| under copyright protection. This does not mean universal
| acceptance of these provisions.
| redeeman wrote:
| traditionally contracts have to be signed by both parties to
| be valid
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| You signed it when you were born, and you benefit from it
| every waking moment of your life. The least you could do is
| abide by it in turn...
| MrVandemar wrote:
| That's very black and white thinking.
|
| Copyright is broken, and in many cases actively impedes
| accessibility. For example, I have many DVDs that have no
| subtitle options. If I were hearing impaired, and if piracy
| were "immoral", I would be shit out of luck if I wanted to
| watch a film I'd, you know, _paid for_.
|
| In this day and age I can go to OpenSubtitles and find a
| subtitle track, enabling me or someone who was in genuine
| need to actually enjoy what they purchased.
|
| (Except in Australia, Open Subtitles is blocked! Its
| considered by the lobbyists to the Government to be piracy
| and of course, piracy as you point out, is "immoral
| regardless" and a "violation of the social contract").
|
| There are many other examples of copyright impeding the
| creation of accessibility options for media where there is no
| economic motive or legislative requirement to produce such
| things, such as in the case of Audio Described content for
| blind and low-vision users for older films. If you're blind
| and want to watch, say, the Special Edition of ALIENS (1986)
| then there's no official option to do so, and the _only_ way
| to be able to enjoy that is via (illegal) volunteer efforts
| on an "immoral" pirate-archivist website.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| The false presumption you make here is that you are
| entitled to these works; you are not. Furthermore, your
| example isn't piracy! If you own Aliens, go watch it. If
| you've lost it, you no longer own it I guess then, do you?
| MrVandemar wrote:
| My response was nothing to do with owning something and
| losing it.
|
| It was about the problem of rigid copyright when
| accessibility options are missing, and the measures that
| a _disabled_ person might need to resort to to have _the
| same access_ that everyone else does, especially when the
| copyright owners decline to make those options available.
|
| It was about being inclusive, and inclusivity is
| absolutely part of our modern social-contract.
|
| I'd love it if you re-read my earlier post, and respond
| to the points as made. It's an interesting and engaging
| debate. Thank you.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| The problem you're refusing to address, and why I did
| reply to your earlier post the way I did (after reading
| it), is that a) you completely ignore the rights of the
| owner of the work, and b) presume some kind of
| entitlement to the work in the first place. What gives
| you the right to stomp on someone else's rights just
| because you "want" to watch a movie?
|
| Besides, as I've already said, we can come up with
| exceptions all day, the general case of piracy, the one
| being discussed, is immoral. If you tie a baby to a
| railroad and only agree to let the baby go if it hears a
| Metallica song, yeah piracy would be justified. That
| doesn't mean much in this conversation however.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| It is fundamentally discriminatory to not provide
| accessibility options. Whether that's a wheel-chair ramp,
| alt-text on an image, using correct HTML markup,
| subtitles/closed-captions or audio description, it's part
| of being inclusive and accomodating and welcoming to
| people with difference in ability, perception and
| neurology. That's a social contract, right there, one
| that's about _people_ and not _stuff_.
|
| Indeed, in many places there is legislation that formally
| grants exemption from copyright _for this exact reason_ ,
| but it's mostly a bit on the weak side and doesn't
| address the systemic problems, which is the big one.
|
| Nothing immoral going on here.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| That's not how it works. If a creator doesn't provide
| accessibility options, you must _ask_ them to, and if
| they refuse, then use the power of adjudication to
| enforce the aspects you claim are part of the social
| contract, or get permission from the creator of the work.
|
| If what you're describing isn't part of the social
| contract (e.g. as you say exceptions to copyright law),
| then what you're describing is vigilante justice, where
| you decide what harms to dole out to others arbitrarily,
| and that's another part of the social contract we all
| agree is not worth it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >It is fundamentally discriminatory to not provide
| accessibility options.
|
| Yes, and no? you are discriminating, but you may not be
| doing it in intentionally. Some options make it easy,
| where for some other arts you need dedicated specialists
| who know of how those disabilities navigate and then make
| new software or work to enable such things. An indie dev
| isn't going to have the references or time or even talent
| to make sure the blind, deaf, and physically handicapped
| can play their game.
|
| >Nothing immoral going on here.
|
| we've gone so far off the script that I think people
| forgot we're still talking about deluxe entertainment.
| Not every socetal wrong under captialism.
| mopsi wrote:
| > The false presumption you make here is that you are
| entitled to these works; you are not.
|
| That's not true. If a publisher refuses to publish a book
| in braille because they see no profit in that, but
| nevertheless sues everyone who does the conversion to
| braille and publication on their own, then this directly
| deprives blind people of their cultural rights.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| how does that contrived example address the point of "you
| are not entitled to these works?" And what the hell is
| "cultural rights"? There's no law to make things
| accessible to the blind. Companies will try to do it to
| get more customers, though.
|
| Yes, a company can sue over a reference to their works
| outside of fair use cases. a translation is not a case of
| fair use. Companies usually won't go after such things
| unless they already have immediate plans to translate,
| but they can. Similar to how they can go after fanart but
| usually leave it be as easy, free, organic advertising.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > a violation of the social contract.
|
| Wallstreet feeds on daily violations of the social contract,
| from 2008 to asset stripping to consolidation to the point
| where therr is no competition, etc.
| crote wrote:
| I also have the _right_ to copy and extract parts of the
| content under Fair Use. If content providers are making this
| technically impossible - thus depriving us of the possibility
| of using it for teaching, research, news reporting, or
| criticism - how are _they_ not violating the social contract?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| you do. You can do this without extracting the entire work.
|
| >If content providers are making this technically
| impossible - thus depriving us of the possibility of using
| it for teaching, research, news reporting, or criticism -
| how are they not violating the social contract?
|
| they aren't? They don't need to provide you with a DRM free
| copy for that. screen record your tv with your phone
| camera, you got the footage. Fair Use doesn't entitle you
| to pristine quality footage. But to go line by line:
|
| - education and meusums has ways to request copies legally.
| It's a pain and money is probably involved but the process
| exists.
|
| - news reporters don't need to necessary show you footage
| of a copyright movie to review and critique it. They will
| simply descibe it in text, as they have for decades before
| the internet made it possible to show clips. This happens
| even with video reports as they will simply put up other
| footage as they describe, or use whatever footage is fair
| game (usually from trailers).
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| No. Given the current situation, as explained by the article,
| the moral thing to do is piracy, as a form of resistance at
| the very least.
| caditinpiscinam wrote:
| "Don't pay for something you can get for free" is about as
| strong a social contract as you'll find under capitalism
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'll be pedantic: it's _unethical_ (ethics are set by the
| society you are in). It 's questionably immoral (based on
| personal values) depending on your views of piracy.
| totetsu wrote:
| Piracy was never piracy
| tommiegannert wrote:
| Perhaps part of the problem is that even the pro-copying side
| keeps calling it "piracy." I'm pretty sure it's meant to induce
| negative feelings in the listener.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Maybe I'm just sheltered, but "pirates" to me evoke goofy
| adventures and hijinks more than hardened criminals hurting
| innocents. So describing copyright violations as "piracy"
| emphasizes how comical the laws being broken are.
| civilitty wrote:
| Same. When I think of "pirates" I think of this:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement. The copyright
| lobby overplayed their hand with those infamous cringey "you
| wouldn't steal a car" ads, and trying to claim that every copy
| made of their product was a "lost sale".
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The worst thing about this campaign was that nearly every
| person on Earth would download a car if that was possible, e.g.
| with an affordable advanced 3D printing robot.
| hazbo wrote:
| I recently learned that it had been reported that the music
| for those ads was stolen and used without permission.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Because of course it was. smh.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The Wikipedia article says that the reporting was
| incorrect and cites https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-
| you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-a...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Piracy isn't piracy either :-). No sailors were harmed in the
| watching of this torrent.
| npteljes wrote:
| Yeah, IT is a funny world where there are rockstars,
| architects, pirates, and neither of them are what the name
| suggests. It's like when people were naming the sea things
| after the already established land-things, so we got the
| seahorse, sea cucumber, seaweed etc.
| dgb23 wrote:
| We generally have to invent so many names it's dizzying. No
| wonder we're using analogies.
|
| Also, terms like "pirate" and "rockstar" are fun to use.
| Maybe we like to use names that distract us from the purely
| abstract, digital reality.
| selcuka wrote:
| Sure, but pirates do steal. How is this a suitable word
| to differentiate something from stealing?
| wizardforhire wrote:
| One mans pirate is another mans patriot... if we're gonna
| get pedantic
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Hey! stop handing out your red pill.
| realusername wrote:
| I kind of liked they did that because now the whole "you would
| not download a car" became a joke and made the position of the
| copyright lobbies weaker morally.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| I always found these funny "you wouldn't steal a car" well I
| might under certain circumstances.
| buserror wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578872 -- 4 hours
| ago.
| alin23 wrote:
| I believe _in most cases_ , DRM would not exist if people
| wouldn't have started pirating digital content. We're also to
| blame for the state of things.
|
| Just like I would not bother to buy and use a bike lock if people
| would not steal bikes in the first place. It's a bad analogy
| though, like all analogies are, since if I sell my bike I can't
| make it stop working for the buyer at a later time. But that's
| the big difference between digital and physical.
|
| I have been working on and off on anti-piracy measures for my
| Lunar app (https://lunar.fyi/) and as much as I want this to not
| affect normal users, the app can still stop working after a
| decade or two if the Paddle licensing server doesn't respond as I
| expect it for example, and I'm no longer around to fix it. This
| could be regarded as DRM by some.
|
| But I would have never wasted time with this if people would not
| crack my app in the first place AND demand customer support and
| flood my dashboard with errors unrelated to the normal
| functioning of the app.
|
| If piracy isn't stealing, then protecting against it isn't
| limiting ownership.
| izacus wrote:
| I find your posts fascinating - after working in the content
| industry for awhile, it's very easy to see (and confirmed with
| repeated studies) that DRM doesn't significantly affect or
| prevent piracy. Not to mention that there's a constant stream
| of more and more anti-customer requests coming from content
| provider lawyers. Requests that would make your head spin at
| just how fundamentaly evil they are (most of them... for now...
| can be pushed back). Remember, those dudes had the idea to
| attempt to make physical media that rot away after few days of
| use.
|
| You are hugely, hugely wrong in the basic premise that actual
| reality of piracy is something that even comes close to
| reasoning for people who put these anti consumer practices in.
|
| Use your brain - DRM allows them to increase profits even
| without piracy (by taking away consumer rights like second sale
| doctrine and ability to share content with your friends and
| family). You're seriously implying it's a bit of piracy that's
| making them say "yes, let's make sure everyone buys their own
| copy of the movie"? Do you think copyright protection laws were
| extended to 70 years+death of the authors because there were
| too many pirates copying Mickey movies?
| raincole wrote:
| > a bit of piracy
|
| Don't know about other content industry, but at least in
| video games, "a bit of" and "piracy" are oxymoron. Any semi-
| popular game has a significant number of pirated copy
| players.
|
| Example: World of Goo claims 90% of players play pirated
| copies.[1] This is a game distributed without DRM and the
| price isn't high ($15 and region-based). 90% piracy rate is
| how customers respond to no DRM.
|
| [1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/world-of-goo-vs-piracy
| smallnix wrote:
| > we divided the total number of sales we had from all
| sources by the total number of unique IPs in our database,
| and came up with about 0.1. that's how we came up with 90%
|
| Did they account for dynamic IPs? If not that number is way
| off.
| nmz wrote:
| The price is quite high for a jobless minor, of which most
| gamers are.
| izacus wrote:
| Note that those % numbers don't convert into sales or
| profits. Those are just the biggest numbers found to defend
| DRM.
|
| (Similarly how being able to share a BluRay with your
| family doesn't lose the content industry N sales of discs.)
|
| This issue is a lot more nuanced than reading some skewed
| stats and declaring that it's a problem.
|
| The core issue is that this is a hugely emotional issue -
| the content industry (and artists of course) are constantly
| playing the "oh poor us, everyone is stealing, those
| criminals!" note to make pirates look bad... while in the
| same sentence establishing outright abusive DRM practices
| and trying to extract maximum money of every single shmuck
| that actually bought their content legally.
|
| DRM has a massive negative effect on legitimate consumers -
| instead of quoting "90% piracy that", instead think about
| just how much of that piracy ACTUALLY hurts anyone and how
| much the attempt to fight it ACTUALLY hurts people who
| legitimately pay for their content and hardware.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| Have a look at http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-
| view-of-game-piracy
|
| <large number>% of copies are pirated, but only <tiny
| number>% of players pirate, it is simply that (some of)
| those that do pirate will tend to pirate a whole lot more
| games. Meaning that that 90% piracy rate means e.g. 5% lost
| sales.
|
| And if you follow
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 then 90%
| piracy rate could also mean 5% extra sales.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Theoretically, you would be right. However, it did reach the
| state of limiting ownership when the providers started changing
| the terms of service making the copy you have not entirely
| yours. Nothing forced them to do that except their own
| interests
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Honest question: has your implementation of copy protection
| increased your revenue and decreased your support request by an
| appreciable amount?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| And even then, why have DRM when you could simply request the
| user's invoice-number or license-ID in the support-ticket
| form?
| alin23 wrote:
| And honest answer: yes. People that would otherwise crack the
| app, still would not buy the app at my price, but started
| asking for discounts. Some were also honest enough to tell me
| that they previously used a cracked version, others I
| recognize from cracking forums.
|
| I'm happy to provide such discounts when people don't have
| the means to pay the whole price. I didn't build the app to
| get rich, I built it to help people get control of their
| monitor brightness, and I'm working towards that goal.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Sorry, I guess I must have missed something -- why would
| they crack it if it didn't have DRM already?
| alin23 wrote:
| I was comparing anti-piracy measures with DRM, I don't
| have actual DRM in my app. I can't block users that
| really bought the app from using it (which is what DRM is
| notorious for).
|
| But I do have a license verification for the Pro features
| (https://lunar.fyi/#pro), and that is what people are
| cracking in the app. I only added more protection around
| this verification.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| > _Just like I would not bother to buy and use a bike lock if
| people would not steal bikes in the first place. It 's a bad
| analogy though, like all analogies are, since if I sell my bike
| I can't make it stop working for the buyer at a later time. But
| that's the big difference between digital and physical._
|
| That's not why your analogy is wrong, especially because some
| connected electric bikes allow that just like smartphones do.
| Here is a rewriting that explains why you analogy is actually
| (very) wrong: "It's a really bad analogy though, since if
| someone steals my bike, I don't have it anymore, while
| "stealing" in the digital world consists in making a copy. But
| that's the big difference between digital and physical."
| xg15 wrote:
| > _since if I sell my bike I can 't make it stop working for
| the buyer at a later time. But that's the big difference
| between digital and physical._
|
| But that's the entire thing the article is about: That suddenly
| in the digital space, it seems to be not just normal but
| _expected_ that vendors maintain control over a product even if
| it 's sold.
|
| > _This could be regarded as DRM by some._
|
| Indeed it is, and it shows the problems with that approach: As
| you say, even with the best of intentions, you can't guarantee
| that the DRM will only shut out illegitimate users: It might
| also deactivate legitimately bought apps if the licensing
| server has an issue or if at some point you don't have the
| resources to run it any longer. That makes a DRM-enabled
| digital product strictly worse than an analog one.
|
| And that's if you're one of the good guys and don't get into
| any third party contract disputes, don't do any shady deals
| with user data and don't go crazy with subscriptions.
|
| > _But I would have never wasted time with this if people would
| not crack my app in the first place AND demand customer support
| and flood my dashboard with errors unrelated to the normal
| functioning of the app._
|
| That sounds a bit like "I wouldn't have to put up this fence if
| people didn't keep jumping over it". What about permitting free
| usage but restricting support to paying customers?
| alin23 wrote:
| > What about permitting free usage but restricting support to
| paying customers?
|
| I already provide a generous free version of my app, I can't
| see how pirating the Pro features, on which I spend an
| enormous amount of time, can be justified.
|
| Restricting support is what I tried first, but it takes too
| much time and effort. Email is slow since I'm very often in a
| different timezone than the buyer. So increasing the back and
| forth messages for asking for the license, and then me having
| to go to a non-mobile friendly site to verify that license
| made the support emails pile up so much that I got burnt out
| in less than two weeks.
|
| Asking for the license also upsets people that are already
| angry because they think my app bricked their monitor or
| something along those lines.
| em-bee wrote:
| don't use a general email address for support.
|
| use an online support tool that can only be accessed by
| people who have a license. possibly use a tool to verify
| the license before they can even contact you.
|
| everyone else can post issues on github.
|
| also, do you track names and email addresses of those who
| bought a license? then you can match up requests and reduce
| the amount of license verification that you need to do.
| colinsane wrote:
| Cory links as the source of this quote to a bluesky page. does
| anyone know how to view these things without a login? doesn't
| seem to be supported by bypass-paywalls or by archive.org yet.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kf...
| mandmandam wrote:
| https://skyview.social/
|
| Quick link to quote:
| https://skyview.social/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbsky.app%2Fprofile...
| UberFly wrote:
| This quote from the author is my favorite. This is so spot-on:
|
| These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth
| Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the
| deal, pray I don't alter it further."
| carom wrote:
| The CEO of the last startup I was at was like that. Very much
| an archetype in my mind now. I will never work with someone
| like that again.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| This video from Y Combinator, "How To NOT Get Screwed As A
| Software Engineer," is full of great tips.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fcfVjd_oV1I
| ryloric wrote:
| Great video, thanks for sharing
| pierat wrote:
| Wow, that's hella tone-deaf.
|
| _EVERYBODY_ under Capitalism, aside the owner class, is
| getting exploited.
|
| It's not 'if you're getting screwed'. It's 'how much'.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Not everyone subscribes to the labor theory of value,
| where Marx's definition of exploitation is a very
| specific, technical one (capturing of profit surplus)
| whereas the conventional definition is not (ie,
| exploiting children for child labor). Most people do not
| think that getting paid for a job even as the company
| makes more money is "exploitation," even if it is so
| under the communist definition.
| todotask wrote:
| Buying is an investment, piracy is a loss of investment and the
| license come with it.
| onion2k wrote:
| It is though because you 'rent' from a digital store but you
| 'steal' from the content owner. _Someone_ owns the content. Just
| not you.
|
| An analogy would be if I rent a car and someone takes it they
| haven't stolen from me but they have stolen from the rental
| company.
|
| (Where 'steal' is strictly shorthand for copyright infringement,
| but that's a pretty meaningless semantic difference outside of a
| courtroom.)
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Is it a 'meaningless semantic difference'?
|
| If I told you I would give you X if you did Y for me, but after
| you did Y I refused to give you X, did I steal from you?
|
| What if I told a prospective client of yours a lie about your
| abilities and they didn't hire you; did I steal from you?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >(Where 'steal' is strictly shorthand for copyright
| infringement, but that's a pretty meaningless semantic
| difference outside of a courtroom.) //
|
| It's not at all meaningless. If I take a photo of your house, I
| copy it, then I do not deny you full enjoyment of that house.
| If on the other hand I steal your house, I think you would feel
| a little more than a semantic difference.
|
| Now, I might copy your house and build another from the same
| materials, which again is unlikely to feel to you like theft.
|
| There are lots of other possible scenarios of course. Suppose
| you're the architect of the first house, you got paid, but not
| you're pissed off because you think you should get paid again
| despite having done no more work... but then it turns out
| people see both houses and they want a house in that style, so
| they come to and give you another few months of work. Do you
| complain about it being "theft" now?
| onion2k wrote:
| _It 's not at all meaningless._
|
| It is meaningless, because pointing out the difference
| doesn't move the conversation forwards in any useful way.
| Everyone who's discussed piracy in the last 40 years knows
| what 'stealing' means in a copyright context, and everyone
| discussing the morality of copyright theft, such as this
| thread, rather than the legality of copyright theft, means
| stealing in the sense of 'taking something without paying for
| it' and not 'depriving the owner of something'.
|
| While the armchair lawyers can't move on from the semantic
| moral (not legal, that's important) difference we won't get
| anywhere. If you're a supreme court judge it matters. If
| you're an internet poster it doesn't.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Of course it matters, people copy memes which act is
| copyright infringement in the UK. If doing so was theft,
| then many of those people wouldn't do it because it's
| unethical to deny someone use of a meme that they created.
|
| Plenty of people skip adverts who wouldn't go into a shop
| and take a BluRay, because they recognise a Categorical
| difference between copyright infringement and theft.
|
| Media companies want to use brainwashing (adverts, news
| stories, statements from authority figures) to cause people
| to consider theft and copying as equivalent so that they
| can exploit creator's labour without themselves adding
| value.
|
| I'm curious what you mean by this:
|
| >armchair lawyers can't move on from the semantic moral
| (not legal, that's important) difference
|
| It seems like you're suggesting there's no legal difference
| between the tort of copyright infringement and the crime of
| theft. Which, given your cogency elsewhere seems unlikely.
| So, what?
| onion2k wrote:
| I'm saying there _is_ a legal difference but there 's no
| important moral difference.
|
| While the acts of stealing and copyright infringement are
| different _for the victim_ , they're not different for
| the person doing committing the theft. That person gets
| something for nothing. I'm saying that's actually the
| important bit in the moral argument. The answer to the
| question of "Is it wrong to take something without paying
| for it?" shouldn't really be "That depends!"
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| I think your analogy is flawed. With piracy, you rent a car and
| someone makes a copy of it, and you never lose the car you
| rented.
| chii wrote:
| If we're talking analogy, it'd be the loss of revenue from
| the 2nd car that would've been rented had the copy not been
| made.
| franga2000 wrote:
| How is "theft vs copyright infringement" just a "meaningless
| difference"?? Stealing takes something away from person A to
| benefit person B. Copyright infringement just...benefits person
| B - nothing is taken from person A.
|
| The better car analogy is if you steal a car from me, I no
| longer have a car, but if you take a detailed 3D scan or photo
| of my car, I still have it. Of course car analogies are
| terrible. A library book is better: if I borrow a book and
| don't give it back, nobody can borrow it again and the library
| needs to buy a new one (theft), but if I borrow it, make a
| photocopy and then return it, other people can also borrow it.
|
| The only way you can make it sound like stealing is using the
| "lost sale" logic, but if the sale isn't guaranteed, it's still
| "less" than theft, and many studies have shown that the sale to
| a pirate isn't even close to guaranteed.
| defrost wrote:
| I've talked to a _lot_ of pirates over the decades and there
| are very few "lost sales" - something like 80% of the file
| sharing population are either "never going to buy it anyway"
| or "I have a paid copy which I have backed up and enjoy
| sharing".
|
| The peak pirating years for Australia (when per capita the
| country dominated the file share numbers) were when digital
| copies of games, music, films were being marked up at 25% to
| 50% over the (after currency conversion) sale prices in the
| US and EU.
|
| After some years of unabated piracy the Australian prices
| dropped to match the rest of the world and piracy rates
| receded to just ticking over, sustained by the technical
| types that enjoyed the process as much if not more than the
| content.
|
| Copyright infringement is a pushback counter pressure against
| eye gouging over zealous pricing.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The basic meaning of theft is that the thief actually deprives
| the owner of their property. If I steal your car then you
| obviously no longer have it and can't use it anymore.
|
| Copyright infringement or counterfeiting, which is related in
| some jurisdictions when an unauthorised copy is made, isn't
| stealing in law because it does not pass that test. Hence your
| example completely misses the point.
| timwaagh wrote:
| I didn't know things had gone quite this far yet.
|
| I have to agree. There should be legislation preventing this, or
| the pirates will be morally in the clear. Which does not help
| copyright owners. Yes, the pirate stole your content, but since
| you were going to revoke access anyhow he was stealing from a
| scammer which is justice.
| caslon wrote:
| A pirate _didn 't_ steal content, though. Nobody lost any
| content! There was no _transaction_ involved. Piracy isn 't
| zero-sum.
| omeid2 wrote:
| Piracy isn't exactly a zero-sum game, there is a cost
| associated with it. Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is
| a shaky ground to stand on; now whatever it hurts the artists
| revenue is a different question, with interesting arguments
| for how or why modern copyright might not provide the
| intended outcomes.
| tpoacher wrote:
| It's not even as straightforward as that. Most serious
| studies on the topic have demonstrated that piracy not only
| does not lead to lost sales, but in fact it leads to
| increased sales instead.
| bad_user wrote:
| ... for Big Tech.
|
| It's how companies like Microsoft or Adobe could grow and
| gain uncontested monopolies. Because, due to piracy,
| price was no longer a good enough differentiator. And
| it's why "Linux on the desktop" never happened.
|
| There aren't many studies on this topic and the available
| ones are bullshit, as they don't take into account second
| order effects of piracy, one of which being the rise of
| streaming with DRM, which also concentrates power in the
| hands of a few Big Tech companies.
|
| Piracy is one of the biggest reasons for why we have
| monopolies. The phenomenon is now repeated with ad
| blockers. And the irony of the situation is that people
| point at monopolies to justify piracy or the use of ad
| blockers.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Analogy: doing business in high-crime or corruption
| areas. Only "big mean nasty" type companies can survive
| the onslaught.
|
| "this is why we can't have nice things"
| omeid2 wrote:
| Indeed, just because some big corps can handle the lost
| revenue in return for pricing competitors out and
| exposure, doesn't mean piracy doesn't impact revenue.
|
| Going from "big corp can handle lost revenue in return
| for market dominance and exposure" to "it doesn't hurt
| revenue" is absurd.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I would assume, that this is partly because one can get
| familiar with the pirated product and then many people
| decide it is worth buying or supporting the creator. Or
| spread the word about the existence of the product.
| brnt wrote:
| Every study done on the matter shows piracy correlates with
| sales. If we are to stop pretending, we should start with
| ending the myth that piracy hurts sales. There is no
| evidence whatsoever of that.
| toyg wrote:
| Piracy is, in fact, free advertising. And, as we all
| know, advertising is the soul of commerce.
| ozim wrote:
| Calling BS on that because no one is going to pirate
| unknown movie/song/software.
|
| You pirate photoshop because you know it is good. You
| pirate movie because you know it is going to be good and
| everyone is waiting to watch it.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Calling BS on that because no one is going to pirate
| unknown movie/song/software.
|
| I've done it. I'd bet that most people who have pirated
| anything have. If you were around for the Napster days
| you'd know that people would often download things they'd
| never heard of before and had no idea if they'd like it
| or not (and that was when it could take many hours, even
| days, for a single album to download!). Piracy is a great
| way to try out new things. Napster led to an increase in
| CD sales as people were discovering new artists and music
| they'd never heard on the radio or MTV
| (https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-napster-boosts-cd-
| sales/)
|
| The objection to P2P file sharing was never about money.
| It was about power and control. It was about gatekeeping.
| The RIAA wants to decide what you can and can't listen to
| and what is popular. They don't want their new
| artists/albums to have to compete with everything ever
| released. They know piracy would increase sales. They
| don't want to give up the control over our culture and
| they don't want the internet to cut them out as useless
| middlemen. With computers and the internet we don't need
| them for distribution or advertising. We can do it all
| without them.
| theatomheart wrote:
| 100%
|
| 'Piracy' is the wrong thing to call it.
|
| Perhaps the gatekeepers you describe are the same ones
| who pushed the term 'piracy' this way; to describe any
| human who copies chunks of 1s and 0s they feel protective
| of.
|
| Meanwhile, real pirates really steal real physical goods
| from real people.
|
| Copiers and pirates are not the same thing, not even
| close.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| Define unknown?
|
| I'm not ashamed to admit that I often download obscure
| games I see on steam to see if they'll actually hook me
| or not. I pay for what I actually am able to sink my
| teeth in to.
|
| The vast majority of movies I download are me going out
| on a limb. In some cases I'm subscribed to a service
| they're available on. I still download them though
| because I'd prefer to use my own player on my own terms.
| You can't even get higher than 720p on Netflix on PC
| without using edge. Horseshit. It is also not infrequent
| that there is no way for me to pay someone to watch it
| online. I'm not going to buy a _used_ copy of a DVD /blu-
| ray to watch something I'm interested in. Ain't nobody
| making money off a used copy. Is resale of used media
| ethical?
| jasonjayr wrote:
| People are going to pirate unknown movie/song/software
| because no seller is going to give it shelf space, making
| it all but unavailable to the general public through
| 'normal' channels.
| antiterra wrote:
| How is this line any different than the sleazy 'work for
| free and you'll get exposure!' grift that people
| constantly do with creative workers?
| amelius wrote:
| Life isn't fair. If I didn't like a movie, I can't unsee it
| and get my money and time back. That's just a fact of life.
| In the same way, people can share content since physics
| doesn't prevent it. We should just accept these limitations
| of how we can control each other.
| rewmie wrote:
| > Piracy isn't exactly a zero-sum game, but there is a cost
| associated with it.
|
| There is zero cost associated with piracy. Zero.
|
| At best, there's an expectation of profit that's not met.
| To argue that, you need to show how copying a file
| translates to a potential sale being converted to a no-
| sale, and there are plenty of evidence that unauthorized
| distribution of copyrighted work drives demand up.
|
| > Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is a shaky ground
| to stand on
|
| Go ahead and show exactly where copying a file hurts
| anyone. You're trying to pass off your personal assertions
| as axioms, but it's on you to prove that copying a file
| without the consent of someone hurts anyone.
|
| Go ahead.
|
| > now whatever it hurts the artists revenue is a different
| question
|
| If anything, artists are the least impacted counterpart as
| they literally get paid a small fraction of the whole
| income.
|
| >
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Go ahead and show exactly where copying a file hurts
| anyone.
|
| Wait until the grandparent learns about public libraries.
| Just havens of content _larceny_! People "stealing"
| content left and right!
| tzs wrote:
| At all the public libraries I've used they only let me
| checkout something if the total number of copies already
| checked out is less than the number of copies the library
| has licenses for. If the number checked out is not under
| the number of licenses they make me wait until one of the
| checked out copies is returned.
| giantrobot wrote:
| That's still no different from the content creator's
| point of view than a non-sale or pirate. The practical
| limitations of libraries is immaterial to the fact I can
| view content without paying the creator anything. Carving
| out some logical exception for content pirates is
| ludicrous. They're functionally no different than non-
| customers or library patrons.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Artists can make money during live concerts instead. As it
| has always been. The artist that writes stuff once and
| reaps benefits forever is a horrible heresy.
| tzs wrote:
| What about artists who are not performing artists? Not
| many people are going to pay to watch someone with just
| basic guitar or piano skills and an ordinary singing
| voice write a song, no matter how great the song turns
| out to be.
|
| They might later pay to watch and listen to excellent
| instrumentalists and singers perform that song, so
| concerts might work for them. Presumably the composer can
| charge those performers...but how much?
|
| You usually can't figure out the worth of a song
| beforehand, so if it is going to be a one-time upfront
| payment from the performers to the composer it is hard to
| figure out the right price.
|
| You can wait until after the song has been released and
| see much the concert tour makes and how many people buy
| copies of the song or listen to it on streaming services
| and that gives you a good idea of the worth of the song.
|
| Upfront you'd have to agree on how the worth is
| calculated and how the price is calculated from that. But
| this is then going to depend on how much revenue the song
| brings and so sounds an awful lot like a royalty
| arrangement, just with a lump payment at the end of the
| license instead of more frequent smaller payments along
| the way.
| Fricken wrote:
| Weird Al recently made a video to point out 300k streams of
| his songs on Spotify earned him a lousy 12 bucks. It seems
| there are costs either way.
| antiterra wrote:
| He made hundreds of thousands of dollars from those
| streams, "twelve dollars" was ironic understatement about
| his dissatisfaction with the compensation Spotify pays
| artists.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think this is reasonable stand. Piracy does affect
| revenue, but probably quite a bit less than anyone makes it
| out to. I believe most that pirate would not have paid in
| first place, either because they don't value it high enough
| or they do not have enough money to pay for it.
|
| Not that actions of those selling does not likely
| contribute much more to loss of revenue, mainly by making
| content unavailable. Availability or pricing compared to
| product is often sub-optimal.
| moffkalast wrote:
| In fact games that get pirated more statistically also earn
| more revenue overall compared to those that don't. QED,
| piracy causes sales.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Correlation vs. causation: is it that games get pirated get
| more exposure therefore more sales, or games that are
| already popular get pirated?
|
| I have to admit I haven't looked at these studies in their
| original form, but I guess sales revenue per install is the
| best metric to tell
| FranGro78 wrote:
| So you're saying that the more popular a game is, the more
| likely it is to be pirated?
|
| Sounds like it has more like the desirability of the game
| driving piracy than the other way around.
| moffkalast wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/925/ :P
| buybackoff wrote:
| Not only sales, but market share/power. Imagine if J3QQ4...
| did not work for Windows 98... Linux on Desktop would be
| already perfect 20 years ago.
| photonerd wrote:
| Doesn't need to have a transaction to be stealing. You just
| need to take (or appropriate) something that you're not
| allowed to.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| this has been said many many times - nothing is taken
|
| people are copying
|
| and what do you mean by "you're not allowed to"
| photonerd wrote:
| Taking just means, broadly, "to gain or acquire".
| Repetition of an incorrect point doesn't make it any more
| valid I'm afraid.
|
| Copying is often called taking a copy. Even basic usage
| of the term copying invalidates your point!
|
| As for "not allowed" that will vary by
| contract/law/agreement/license/etc
|
| This distinction is why it's usually not downloaders that
| are punished, rather _uploaders_ : they're the ones that
| broke an agreement.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| That sense of the word "take" is fairly consistently used
| of physical things, where you are depriving another of
| possession (with or without permission).
|
| --***--
|
| (Just for fun, The Devil's Dictionary (not a work to be
| taken particularly seriously):
|
| > _TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but
| preferably by stealth._
|
| I quite like that way of putting it because it's the
| megacorporations that are the pirates when they steal
| their DRM content back, because they _are_ acquiring it
| from you so that you can't have it, by force if they have
| to but they prefer stealth.)
| shinycode wrote:
| There is thousands of hours of paid work to produce any
| kind of software or game. It doesn't matter if the end
| result is burned into a physical disk or not. What's of
| value here is not the 1 cent piece of plastic but the
| content.
|
| When you copy content that has a cost, if the company is
| not offering it to you, what do you call your action ?
|
| I mean, really, you spent 5 years working on a game with
| no salary. Then a day before launch day someone just
| makes a copy of it and distributed it << for free >> in
| the internet. How are you going to make a salary out of
| it ?
| clnq wrote:
| Games are always pirated if they are even a little bit
| popular. I work in the games industry, and games I worked
| on are always pirated, but the more popular they are, the
| more copies will be sold legitimately.
|
| People make two choices when they pirate - moral, and
| economical. If economically they cannot afford the game,
| they weren't going to pay. If morally they are against
| paying for a game (like if the game company is associated
| with suicides, etc), they weren't going to pay. There are
| some people that will pay if piracy isn't available, but
| not that many.
|
| Anyways, after the income goes around, and all the exec,
| upper management, and publisher salaries are paid, the
| piracy or lack of it probably makes about a $1 difference
| to my weekly earnings. I put a lot of artistic and
| creative effort, blood, sweat, and tears into it. If it
| costs me $1 to make people enjoy it, so be it.
|
| In the AAA games industry, piracy is a thing. People talk
| about it. And most people have only very mild things to
| say about it, except for execs. Execs make a
| disproportionate amount of money off games for what they
| do, and they do kinda have a lot of time to sit on their
| hands sometimes, so they can fight these piracy battles,
| die on these piracy hills.
|
| Anyways, don't speak for us please.
| shinycode wrote:
| My example was a illustrate a point. It could be a game
| or a productivity software, movies, music anything.
|
| You can find any reason to steal, economical, hunger etc
| the point I making is that the motivation to make a copy
| does not make it legal.
|
| Do we tolerate some form of theft for moral or other
| reasons ? Yes sure. But because I, as an individual, have
| my own reasons not to pay for something and decide to
| make a copy of it, that does not transforms my action to
| a perfectly legal thing.
|
| Maybe we can't do anything about software being copied
| but that doesn't magically make laws and IP disappear
| with it and makes copying software legal ?
|
| I was answering to the comment << nothing is taken >>.
| Because the content is the result of an effort from other
| people being paid, the content has value. The fact that
| we can make infinite copies of it makes a single copy
| worthless because it's not being burnt into a piece of
| plastic ?
| clnq wrote:
| There are moral principles, and legal principles.
| Legally, you are right. But the moral perception of
| piracy is shifting, and broadly speaking, this entire
| debate is in the moral/philosophical realm.
|
| Legal systems ultimately enshrine the human morality in
| law. Common law - through case law, civil law - by
| committees that the legislators consult, religious law -
| by morality described in legal texts. We're not talking
| about any of it though. We are talking about day-to-day
| things, like what does it mean to steal, what kind of
| consequences it has, are these consequences real or
| supposed, and other such things.
|
| Law is generally blind to externalities of an action. An
| action itself is legal, illegal, or undefined in law.
| We're not in this domain if we talk about the
| consequences of piracy or how someone might feel about
| it. We are having a conversation on morals.
|
| Shifting morals will eventually shift the law, of course.
| zxt_tzx wrote:
| Instead of getting into a shouting match over whether piracy
| is or isn't stealing, here's an interesting story.
|
| Bill Gates made an interesting comment regarding software
| piracy in the 1990s. At that time, software piracy was
| rampant in China, and Microsoft's Windows operating system
| was one of the most pirated products. In response to this
| situation, Gates remarked that if people were going to pirate
| software, he would prefer they pirate Microsoft's software.
|
| His rationale was strategic: if people in China became
| accustomed to using Microsoft's Windows and Office software,
| they would be more likely to continue using these products in
| the future, including in business environments where
| legitimate software licenses are more commonly purchased.
|
| (Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly
| different matter.)
| ozim wrote:
| Not so fun part is that this discussion goes on about
| ,,generic" idea.
|
| I can already see that what works for software does not
| work for movies.
|
| Other topic is also devices supporting DRM.
|
| I would say paying for software new versions makes sense
| there is work to be done to keep it working on new devices
| etc.
|
| Paying for the same book or movie again because
| distribution rights between corporations changed is messed
| up.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| the same goes for most professional software, like the
| adobe suite. if people pirated, it's because they're not
| professionals yet. once they are, they're more likely to
| buy the software they're used to and not the competition.
| lstodd wrote:
| > (Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly
| different matter.)
|
| Well, actually they did, at least in ex-USSR, and I think
| in Eastern Europe too.
|
| After not ever having a single legitimate license in 1990s
| and early 2000s (and being laughed upon if you had one), by
| late 2000s Microsoft business took off handsomely.
| veidr wrote:
| > (Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly
| different matter.)
|
| But also the key point, right? Although I suspect he was
| correct.
|
| (Also, has very little to do with the purchasing dynamics
| of movies or music, etc., although those special interests
| can fuck off...)
| stcg wrote:
| It's not stealing. It's communication. You can't "steal" ideas,
| information or facts. To steal means to physically take
| someone's property without their consent.
| swinglock wrote:
| False. When someone without your permission copies your
| source code, plans or inventions, which are not physical
| things, is this not theft? What about the non physical bits
| and bytes in your Dropbox or bank account? That's just like,
| an exchange of information, man. Why must the "physical"
| qualifier be there?
| Nursie wrote:
| One does not merely copy the numbers in a bank account when
| committing theft. The key part is depriving the original
| owner of the use of the item.
|
| Whether you think piracy is right or wrong, there is a
| crucial difference between traditionally understood
| stealing or theft, in that the original owner no longer has
| the thing. With copyright infringement that's not the case.
| photonerd wrote:
| > The key part is depriving the original owner of the use
| of the item.
|
| I know that's been a tribal shibboleth of piracy since
| the 2000s, and I'm sympathetic to the moral argument to
| this view... but it's just factually untrue (both in
| terminology AND in law)
| Nursie wrote:
| It's not though, in law, as they are different crimes.
| And that's where copyright infringement even is a crime
| rather than a civil matter as it is in many places.
| swinglock wrote:
| I didn't comment on piracy.
|
| As for piracy, of course it's wrong, though far less
| serious than what I responded to.
|
| > depriving the original owner of the use of the item
|
| When someone invests to make a film, do you think the use
| of the resulting film to the owner is to watch it or sell
| it?
|
| To break it down, did someone invest millions to make
| millions, or did someone pay millions to watch one movie?
|
| You know the answer and thus we know that stealing a copy
| without paying does does in fact deprive the original
| owner of the use of the item, which was always to sell
| copies of it, that's the reason and criteria for its
| existence.
|
| At small scale though the industry still makes do, so
| it's less serious than stealing for example, a company
| (e.g. their information). Every act of piracy also wasn't
| technically a stolen sale, because not everyone stealing
| would ever have bought it if stealing wasn't an option.
| Nursie wrote:
| Copying something does not remove the thing from the
| original owner, hence these are different acts.
|
| Referring to such things as theft or stealing is lazy and
| incorrect, regardless of relative severity.
|
| The fact you use the term "stealing" in your
| justification of the act being "stealing" kinda points to
| your own circular reasoning there, rather than a good
| defence.
|
| We can agree it's wrong without polluting the semantic
| space. Otherwise we may as well just call everything
| "murder" or "terrorism" and be done with it.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| Well actually (Yeah I'm going to well actually you) many
| movies are quite literally produced in such a way that
| structures the production companies to not make any money
| and instead shift any profits up the pyramid while
| extracting the maximum value of possible tax credits and
| grants offered any number of political entities, as well
| as disbursing themselves from several liabilities.
|
| On paper many incredibly successful films lose money. The
| game is rigged. The industry more than makes do.
|
| People are free to draw their own lines. I pay for some
| things and don't pay for others as far as digital content
| goes. The structure of it doesn't even necessarily fit
| into this clean cut idea however. If I pay for Prime and
| download something that I could watch via prime ( and I
| do, because I'd rather watch it in my preferred video
| play whenever and not only if I have an internet
| connection or on specific devices or god forbid the thing
| I'm watching or intending to watch in the near future
| slips off the service) what is the math in that?
| photonerd wrote:
| Incorrect.
|
| You're using one of the intransitive definitions but general
| speaking it's the _transitive_ forms that apply to digital
| content, ideas, information, etc.
|
| 1. to take or appropriate without right or leave and with
| intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
|
| 2. to take away by force or unjust means
|
| 3. to take surreptitiously or without permission
|
| You may not _want_ stealing to mean that... but that's
| irrelevant to reality.
| stcg wrote:
| Also in these transitive definitions, stealing is about
| _taking_. And in the case of piracy (communicating
| information to others without permission of the original
| source), nothing is _taken_.
|
| The person that came up with the idea still has it. The
| photographer still has the picture. The programmer still
| has the program.
|
| It's just about what another person may do with it, the one
| receiving the picture. May _they_ also send it to someone
| else? We could have different ideas about that, but calling
| it "stealing" is inaccurate.
| photonerd wrote:
| Taking can simply mean "to gain or acquire". So, once
| again, incorrect. Sorry.
|
| I'm sympathetic to the moral argument you're making--
| though when the raw goods are digital too I think it's an
| impractical & ill conceived one--but both legally AND
| linguistically... it's incorrect
| stcg wrote:
| Let's say Alice took a photograph and sends a copy of it
| to Bob.
|
| Are you then saying that when Bob sends another copy to
| Charlie, Bob is taking something? What is Bob taking?
| photonerd wrote:
| Charlie certainly was (he took a copy from Bob).
|
| Bob is the _distributor_ in this context however. In most
| Berne convention states he broke copyright law
| (technically, but nothing would happen)
|
| Together Bob & Charlie _gained or acquired a picture
| produced by Alice's work effort that was unauthorized_.
|
| That's stealing. Is it a big deal? Probably not. Still
| stealing.
| Nursie wrote:
| Alice still has it, so it's not stealing as commonly
| understood.
|
| I'd say the opposite - it could still be a huge deal to
| Alice, but it doesn't meet the definition of stealing or
| theft.
| jdright wrote:
| as you said, he broke copyright law. that is copyright
| infringement, it is not theft.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| So close and then the stealing part slipped back in.
|
| We have a separate term already for the right to copy
| something - copyright.
|
| We have a term for copying something without that right-
| copyright infringement.
|
| Not theft. Copyright infringement.
| autoexec wrote:
| Which dictionary defines taking as simply gaining or
| acquiring something? If you "take" something from someone
| else it generally means that they no longer have what you
| took.
|
| This is all really pretty simple:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
|
| Also, (at least in the US) legally copyright infringement
| is distinct from stealing.
| ben_w wrote:
| Hot take, take a photo, take part, take the bus, take a
| left, take a shower, take pride in your work, take a
| joke, take something apart, take my word for it, take a
| while, take an oath. Being over precious about
| definitions is unwise.
|
| Also, from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take
|
| Verb, 1, To get into one's hands, possession, or control,
| with or without force.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| This use of 'take' is an endless source of dad jokes, of
| course.
|
| Child: "I'm going to go take a shower"
|
| Dad: "Make sure you put it back when you're done."
| worthless-trash wrote:
| A new legend, was born.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Is taking a picture of someone kidnapping?
| ben_w wrote:
| Curious choice of example. I know what you mean of
| course, but the point is words shift meaning.
|
| For a counter-example connected to your choice, I was
| recently made aware of the Latin word for "to abduct",
| and how that word may well be why it took so long for
| spousal abuse to become recognised as an offence -- to
| paraphrase your own question to demonstrate how this goes
| very wrong, how can you "abduct" someone you live with?
| gpm wrote:
| Depends on who you ask
|
| https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8380/did-
| some-c...
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Say one counterfeits a hundred dollar bill perfectly.
| Does he steal? Say he is able to do this in large
| quantities. Does he steal? You still have you hundred
| dollar bill. No loss to you right? Wrong. Your money's
| worth is lessened by the counterfeiting, the copying.
| That is what they mean by stealing: you are decreasing
| the value of their products by providing identical copies
| outside of their control.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| You're right that counterfeiting devalues currency, but
| that doesn't make it stealing. Nobody would refer to
| counterfeit currency as "stolen".
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Alrighty. So copying movies is fraud. Not theft or
| piracy.
| gpm wrote:
| Fraud involves lying, copyright infringement doesn't
| necessarily.
|
| Copying movies is copying things congress said you can't,
| a crime distinct from both theft and fraud.
|
| Piracy has for whatever reason been co-opted to refer to
| copying despite that having no relationship to piracy on
| the high seas, but no one is playing linguistic games to
| argue that they're the same thing so whatever.
| hooverd wrote:
| It's only fraud if you sell them as genuine?
| Trombone12 wrote:
| Since value is only defined by what people are willing to
| pay for it, and lacking any extra common rules, these
| acts of copying simply signal not accepting the demanded
| price: so the value claimed by the owner was not the
| _actual value_ , thus they have lost only their self-
| deception about the value.
| maweki wrote:
| By that definition, whenever I create (on my own) a
| product that is both superior and cheaper than a
| competitor's offering, lessening the value of their
| product, it is stealing.
| growse wrote:
| There are actually people who reason like this. I
| remember being struck by this attitude when reading
| Bloomberg's book - effectively morally eqivocating
| business competition with stealing food out of their
| children's mouths.
| Sakos wrote:
| Unfortunately, businesses actually think this way. See
| any number of lawsuits based on this kind of thinking.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| This is exactly what people are saying about any number
| of innovations!
| tacocataco wrote:
| Banks wish money into existence with fractional reserve
| banking. Sounds like counterfeit to me!
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| No, it is lawful. So not stealing. That is illegal. It
| may not be fair though. But it is lawful. Complain to
| your liberal government rep.
| npoc wrote:
| If you've managed to create a perfect hundred dollar bill
| then you've done nothing different to what the bank did.
| Are both of you stealing?
|
| One way of looking at it is that the banks didn't have to
| expend a tiny fraction of $100 worth of effort to obtain
| the dollar bill, whereas any normal person would have to.
| The question is does the bank deserve that $100?
| Especially at a cost to everyone else (who are largely
| unaware/tricked).
|
| Personally I'd class that as "fraud" but it all comes
| under a similar umbrella.
|
| Theft is taking something you don't deserve, without the
| other party's consent.
|
| Fraud is taking something you don't deserve, with the
| other party's _misplaced_ consent.
|
| So yes, in the case of copying music for example, I agree
| - you're copying someone's idea, which is essentially
| taking the product of their work without their consent.
| Their work is no longer scarce, and so loses half its
| value. It's not really any different to stealing half the
| money they've worked for, other than that it seems almost
| impossible to stop you without creating paradoxes such as
| this topic.
|
| It's detrimental as they no longer have the same
| incentive to do that work and so society doesn't
| progress.
|
| You've taken the reward from the person that did the work
| and shared it amongst the whole of society who didn't
| work for it. It's pure socialism - and we can see the
| effects of it in the quality of modern music.
| jonhohle wrote:
| If Alice breaks Bob's leg, does she steal his mobility?
| Sure, but criminally she'd be charged with assault or
| battery or both.
|
| Likewise, the legal definition of theft or stealing does
| not apply to copyright infringement despite decades long
| campaigns to get the public to believe that to ge the
| case. Relatedly, there are similar campaigns to redefine
| violence as something that offends someone.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| people are not taking anything, they're copying
| photonerd wrote:
| Copying is "gaining or acquiring" so would come under
| "taking", sorry.
| numerobis wrote:
| To take: "to move something or someone from one place to
| another". Copying is not taking, sorry.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| You seem to be using a dictionary with very short
| entries. Mine contains 10 different meanings of the verb
| "take" and one of them is "obtain, gain, acquire".
| jonhohle wrote:
| Dictionary definitions and legal definitions may or may
| not overlap. If not discussing the legal definition, than
| steal could mean someone enjoyed an appropriately
| licensed copyrighted work secretly or in private.
| Blahah wrote:
| Your definition supports the OP. All three require
| 'taking', which doesn't happen with copying
| photonerd wrote:
| Taking can simply mean "to gain or acquire".
|
| If that's your argument... it's unsound linguistics and
| legally.
| sophacles wrote:
| If its an unsound argument, why are copyright and theft
| different bodies of law?
| Blahah wrote:
| But that isn't what it means in the context of theft, and
| linguistically the distinction is clear unless you are
| being disingenuous. There is absolutely no linguistic
| foundation for equating theft and duplicating
| information.
|
| Legally the distinction is also clear - transgression of
| copyright law is specifically given the term "copyright
| infringement" in law in English speaking countries and in
| international agreements. A person cannot be convicted of
| theft for copying information. The US supreme court,
| among others, ruled on exactly this:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_
| (19...
| cesaref wrote:
| The point is that stealing has traditionally meant denying
| the rightful owner the thing that has been stolen. What is
| going on here is that a copy has been made without
| permission - piracy is copyright infringement, this is
| different to stealing.
|
| https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-
| definitions.html#:~:t....
|
| Now there has been a lot of effort by the media industry to
| equate copyright infringement with stealing, I think
| because the public at large doesn't really understand
| infringement as a terrible thing. Stealing appears in the
| 10 commandments, so in our judeo christian societies it's a
| home run to get 'right thinking' people on side.
| sk11001 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
|
| I don't even know what my personal stance on piracy is but
| the subject is clearly more complex than saying that theft
| applies only to physical objects.
| tkfu wrote:
| Yes, but people are allowed to express a strong opinion on
| a complex subject without also specifically mentioning all
| the caveats and possible counter-arguments to their
| position.
|
| By all means argue back and add the nuance you think is
| missing, but it's intellectually dishonest and lazy to just
| say "ah, but it's more complicated than that".
| Trombone12 wrote:
| Uh, _surely_ "I know it is more complicated but I will
| not mention that" is the lazy stance?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Posting to HN is not like writing a finalized spec or
| publishing an academic paper. It's ok to ignore
| complicated edge cases and speak in generalities. Nobody
| expects commenters to 100% cover every issue with every
| post.
| amelius wrote:
| You are confusing what they think is justice with what some
| people have decided is justice.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I remember one RMS lecture that made me think. He pointed
| out that the so-called "intellectual property" doesn't
| really exist. What exists are certain laws, such as
| patents, copyright, trademarks and so on. Each of these
| recognizes the benefit to society of temporary restriction
| of freedom of others to use the ideas that were
| invented/transmitted by others.
| Trombone12 wrote:
| You can just drop "intellectual" and there will be no
| fundamental change to the argument, it's only the name of
| the laws defining "property" that change.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| You seem to be missing that my laptop existing is an
| objective fact rather than a logical argument.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Yes, but the association of that laptop with yourself as
| an owner is an abstract idea. Many mammals do not have
| such ideas of ownership as an exclusive right, though
| many will defend territory, mates, and offspring.
| jonhohle wrote:
| It can not be understated how foundational exclusive
| property rights are to modern society and technological
| advancement. Since at least the Magna Carta it's
| considered a human right. The US Declaration of
| Independence almost enumerated property as an inalienable
| right in place of the pursuit of happiness.
|
| How could I have forgotten: the idea of personal property
| is also essential to Jewish law, predating the Magna
| Carta by another 2,000 years. That's at least 3,000 years
| of at least a portion of humans placing value on private
| property.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Yes, but that's true of IP, too. And the importance of
| property laws in general doesn't make them less of an
| abstraction.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I updated my earlier comment to point out much earlier
| property laws. As best I can tell, copyright laws are
| around 500 years old, and about 230 in America. They were
| always written to give the creator a limited monopoly,
| unlike property, which is in perpetuity. Personal
| property is typically not considered to have the wide
| public value or cultural impact that ideas have.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| There's definitely a deep philosophical discussion to be
| had here about what value governments provide in return
| for your tax dollars on property that in reality they
| allow you to do certain things with, insofar as any human
| can claim to own any piece of this planet. In the end, it
| usually boils down to paying for them to defend it from
| invaders and anyone trying to take it from you, so think
| about the tax like a protection fee that entitles you to
| call up guys with guns to make whoever is trying to break
| that government's rules about what you can and cannot do
| with that property you pay tax on stop. Consider US
| military strength (perceived and actual, as far as we can
| even measure that) vs rest of world, same with property
| values and wages in the US vs other places.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I'd highly recommend reading the 1840 banger * What Is
| Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and
| of Government* by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon of _Property is
| theft!_ fame.
| fmbb wrote:
| The fact that some powerful organizations are trying to
| complicate a matter does not make it complicated per se.
|
| In my country the law criminalizing theft begins thus:
|
| > Stold
|
| > Stold beskrivs i 8 kap. 1 SS. Stoldbrottet forekommer i
| tre allvarlighetsvarianter:
|
| > * Ringa stold (tidigare snatteri): 8 kap 2 SS > * Stold:
| 8 kap 1 SS > * Grov stold: 8 kap 4 SS
|
| > Skyddsintresset vid stold ar aganderatten. Endast losa
| saker samt del till fast egendom kan agas.
|
| The third sentence defines property as physical.
|
| Reading texts on international property rights it's always
| quite clear what everyone is talking about. "Intellectual
| property" is sometimes mentioned as an aside with an extra
| caveat that it is not widely recognized.
| simbolit wrote:
| If you want to know how bullshit intellectual "property"
| is, ask the simple question of who owns the personal
| information the ad company collected about me?
|
| Of course, the ad company owns it, because of their hard
| intellectual work of collecting it.
|
| Me? No, why would I own information about me? What logic of
| property is this?
| nox100 wrote:
| If you come to my restaurant isn't in my info that you
| walked in my door, sat at my table, ordered my food? Why
| do you think it's your info? When two interact both sides
| get to remember the interaction.
| simbolit wrote:
| The question is not if you can "remember" it. That is not
| what ownership in personal information is about.
|
| The question is whether you can __sell__ the information
| that I had three double cheese burgers and extra greasy
| fries to my health insurance provider.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You still own the information. You can retain a lot of
| all your restaurant visits and order history and sell
| that if you want to.
| brookst wrote:
| The question is whether you own information about their
| food choices that you can sell to a third party without
| even telling the customer it was collected.
|
| On the one hand, it seems obvious that you have a right
| to observe, collect data, and sell it. On the other hand,
| ick.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Just ask TV and car manufacturers who collect telemetry
| about absolutely everything you do with their products
| and probably everything that happens on your connected
| phone and/or wifi network too.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Yes, and it's "ick" because that's the actual definition
| of a spy [0]:
|
| > 1 : one that spies: a : one who keeps secret watch on a
| person or thing to obtain information
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spy
| vimax wrote:
| But if I walk into a franchise restaurant with a camera
| recording, they'll kick me out while happily recording
| and selling data with their own cameras.
| somat wrote:
| I always thought the weirdest cases were in genetic
| fields. Where the ip in question is violated by every
| single living person.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction
| himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at
| mine, receives light without darkening me." -- Thomas
| Jefferson
| rusk wrote:
| But why giveth when you can chargeth
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Jefferson wasn't scrambling to pay his mortgage with those
| ideas. See also: Amazon and open source, why should Amazon
| be the only one able to make a profit? If the ideas have no
| value, then all that matters financially is manufacturing
| and infrastructure
| Angostura wrote:
| And that's why it is impossible to make a living from
| anything that isn't embodied as a physical item, right?
| hug wrote:
| Of course you can and should be entitled to make a living.
| You can do so IP free, even in creative fields.
|
| You can't make a billion dollars, IP free, and that's okay
| with me.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I mean, why do you think we really got away from the idea
| of tying currency to something physical? Money and
| property are just ideas that enough people agree about to
| matter. If you don't agree, too bad and good luck
| convincing all the others that you're right, especially
| with all the resources and power that the winners under
| this system have gained under it.
| rzzzt wrote:
| In the case of cars (the go-to object for all analogies) the
| bad guy is charged with "unauthorized use of a motor
| vehicle". That's not stealing either.
| rezonant wrote:
| Well actually that would be grand theft auto at least in
| the US.
|
| ...And unauthorized use of a motor vehicle as a second
| count.
| benj111 wrote:
| Depends on the jurisdiction.
|
| In the UK you can be charged with theft.
|
| For joyriding and dumping they created the crime of
| twoccing (taking without owners consent).
|
| A 'twoker' is also a derogatory term for a certain class of
| person
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| Surely you can steal a car without using it?
| tim333 wrote:
| This is obviously a bit about the definition of words but
| I've only really heard it called stealing in the US where I
| think the narrative is pushed by corporate interests. In the
| UK where I live the offence is generally called copyright
| infringement because under UK law that's what it is.
| bregma wrote:
| Information wants to be free.
| eatrocs wrote:
| information wants to be wrong!!!
|
| - sam & max
| gentleman11 wrote:
| What about information about your medical records?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Of course you can steal information, there's no reason why
| the notion of theft ought to be limited to physical goods,
| we're not living in the stone age. 90% of what we do and own
| exists in digital form. We can take possession of it, protect
| it, lock it away, attribute ownership to it as much as we can
| do to any physical property. If you disagree I'd appreciate
| if you could tell us your credit card information.
|
| People just try to rationalize their behavior and play silly
| word games because they're attempting to avoid the simple
| fact that piracy is robbing other people of their labour.
|
| Kant gave us a good principle, universalizability. If
| everyone pirated, creators would not get compensated,
| therefore they could not sustain themselves and it would be
| obvious that the value of their work is being stolen.
| Evidently, pirates are free-riders and their theft just isn't
| evident because enough people usually compensate for it.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > piracy is robbing other people of their labour.
|
| That's a coherent position, but it is also perfectly
| reasonable to argue that it's not because you have a copy
| and have not removed the original.
|
| Edit: Note that this doesn't inherently make piracy okay,
| since it may deprive the owner of revenue or other
| benefits; there's a difference between objecting to piracy
| and saying that it's exactly theft.
| newt_slowly wrote:
| If everyone pirated, the only people who would create
| content would be people doing it purely for the sake of art
| or their own enjoyment, far more people would be personally
| involved in creating art (in music for example, there would
| be far more people going to see local performances if there
| were less music produced as mass media due to loss of
| profitability), mass media would be reduced and more art
| would be local (and still physical), increasing the
| richness and diversity of the media landscape.
|
| In my opinion, that would be a far superior world to the
| one we live in.
| lobf wrote:
| How would you create Titanic locally? Who would invest
| the massive amount of money required to make a film,
| especially one like that, without expecting a return?
| beej71 wrote:
| After someone steals a movie, the studio can no longer
| stream that movie as they do not possess it any longer.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > they're attempting to avoid the simple fact that piracy
| is robbing other people of their labour.
|
| It's not. A pirate is just another non-customer. There's
| robbing involved when someone chooses not to buy something.
| Watching a movie at a friend's house isn't robbing the
| producers of anything. Neither is buying something second
| hand. These are all non-customers of the original creator.
| lancesells wrote:
| That's a huge stretch to say anyone that watches or
| listens to pirated entertainment would never pay for it.
| I wish people that use pirated entertainment would just
| admit that they don't want to pay for it.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It's the same stretch as saying people pirating content
| will never pay for it. All non-customers are simply not
| paying a creator for content. It doesn't fucking matter
| why they're a non-customer. From the perspective of a
| media publisher a pirate is no different than someone
| buying media second hand or never watching it in the
| first place.
|
| If I buy a used Blu-ray I'm not giving a dime to Disney.
| I get to watch the Avengers all I want without ever
| paying them anything. They have lost _nothing_ because I
| didn 't take anything from them nor prevented them from
| selling a copy of the Avengers to someone else.
|
| If you replaced my second hand copy of the Avengers with
| a pirated copy, nothing would change about the situation.
| Disney was deprived of nothing. The same is true if I
| rent it from the library, borrow it from a friend, or
| just never watch it. To Disney I am simply a non-
| customer.
| ineptech wrote:
| If everyone pirated music, musicians would make all their
| income from merch and touring and it's not clear that
| they'd be worse off.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| And if you read or watch much about all the musicians
| reviewing their Spotify Wrapped this year vs how much
| they were paid, you'd see that we're already there. The
| value of their work went to music streaming services and
| everyone using their music in their productions, very
| little made it back to the creators.
| stcg wrote:
| > If you disagree I'd appreciate if you could tell us your
| credit card information.
|
| I'm not talking about being _obliged_ to share. Of course
| people should have the right to not share their credit
| details. My point is that if you _receive_ information from
| someone, then sharing it with a third party is not
| stealing.
|
| Actually, an obligation to share information is a
| restriction on freedom just like copyright, which can
| _prohibit_ sharing information.
| tzs wrote:
| > To steal means to physically take someone's property
| without their consent
|
| That's one meaning. As with many English words that one has
| several. Here are several examples of how "steal" is used in
| English for things that involve other than taking physical
| taking of property:
|
| * Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in
| having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their
| doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with
| it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their
| heart.
|
| * An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance
| that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say
| that the actor "stole" the show.
|
| * An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain
| access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard
| containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret
| in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that
| the rival company "stole" your secret formula.
|
| * When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer
| email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is
| commonly said that the data was "stolen".
|
| * Alice is Bob's fiance. Mallory woos Alice without Bob's
| knowledge. Alice elopes with Mallory. Most would find it
| acceptable if Bob said that Mallory "stole" his fiance.
|
| * A team that has been behind since the start of the game but
| wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have
| "stolen" the game.
| sdiupIGPWEfh wrote:
| Substituting one meaning of "steal" or "theft" for another
| meaning and saying they're the same thing sure sounds like
| equivocation.
| neycoda wrote:
| "Stealing" has been used as a common word for "copying
| without permission" in the digital age. To try to play word
| games by trying to walk back the definition of stealing to
| mean only "taking someone's physical property" is completely
| pointless and futile unless you're just trying to feel OK
| with yourself copying without permission.
|
| If I produce and distribute content like music or videos,
| it's fair for me to want people that want to rent or own it
| to pay for it. I put a lot of time and effort into it, I have
| to manage and market it, maybe store it, and I want to make a
| living at it.
|
| If people are stealing it, ahem, copying without permission,
| it undercuts my living. I have a right to earning from my
| work, and you don't have a right to just download it or copy
| it or distribute it to others without me getting paid for it.
| It's literally preventing earnings for me that would
| otherwise happen if you didn't copy it without permission
| (ahem, stealing).
| Sakos wrote:
| When the people who sell it to us are free to revoke access
| at any time, then there's no walking back being done by us.
| We're just recognizing that the accepted state of things
| was reneged on by one party and they can't insist on being
| in the right when we decide we're not obligated to follow
| their arbitrary rules anymore.
| partitioned wrote:
| Yeah but if you sell them something and they click "buy" or
| "purchase" and not "rent" and then you revoke the license
| years later you're the thief, not the person downloading
| what they purchased on utorrent.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I'm increasingly convinced that the right of first sale
| must extend to copyrighted work licenses to individuals
| to rebalance the benefit to society. Movies, video games,
| and music are all "sold" primarily in a way that prevents
| them from being shared, lent, or transferred to others.
| Books are probably the only medium left that is still
| primarily physical (71% in 2022).
| vehemenz wrote:
| "Stealing" is morally charged and too associated with the
| loss of property to be a fair or accurate term here. It's
| not word games; it's conceptual analysis and a basic
| understanding of rhetoric.
|
| Digital piracy, broadly speaking, is unauthorized copying.
| Depending on the context, it could be theft. Sometimes that
| theft is legal, but people feel it shouldn't be on moral
| grounds. Other times that theft is illegal, but people feel
| it shouldn't be on moral grounds. Sometimes, it's just not
| theft at all.
| dahart wrote:
| That's incorrect. One absolutely can steal ideas, it's even
| used explicitly in the definition of multiple dictionaries:
| "to claim credit for another's idea" [1]; "to appropriate
| (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment"
| [2]. The word steal has many definitions that don't involve
| taking physical property, e.g., stealing elections, stealing
| liberty, stealing base, stealing a kiss, making fraudulent
| deals, etc., etc..
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steal
|
| [2] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/steal
| nox100 wrote:
| what word would you use if you hired a lawyer or accountant
| to do some paperwork and when they finished you just copied
| the documents and then didn't pay them because "it's not
| stealing, it's just communication"?
| tuhriel wrote:
| Actually two words: bad laywer
|
| If laywer sets up such a contract with you, he can't be a
| good one.
|
| I'll see myself out...
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Metallica made sure that argument doesn't hold water in court
| back when they were suing all their fans for downloading
| their music on Napster. To this day I remind everyone who
| will listen why I refuse to listen to them ever again
| whenever their name comes up.
| Sai_ wrote:
| Yeah, I can't believe Metallica recovered from that. In my
| mind, they're up there with Volkswagen - their brand has a
| stigma attached to it.
| motbus3 wrote:
| One extra detail. They reserve the right to revoke your license
| but they still reserve the right to keep selling the product if
| the laws allow.
|
| This allows the following hypothetical situation: 1. You buy
| content A from producer X through a company 1 2. Producer X and
| company 1 decides to finish the distribution agreement for
| whatever reason 3. Company 1 revokes your access to content A.
| 4. Now producer X seals a deal with Company 2 for distribution
| rights and company 2 has no obligation on giving you access to
| content A, because why would they. 5. If you want access
| content A now you have to buy it again from company 2 without
| guarantee that it will still exist.
| neycoda wrote:
| > If you want access content A
|
| Right, _access_. To the companies selling cloud content, like
| a movie or song that can only be used with the internet,
| you're just buying _access_ to the content.
|
| Because the TOS means they can restrict that access or remove
| the content, you're really just paying for a key to a door
| that may or may not exist, to something in the building that
| may or may not be there, and that building may someday not
| even be there.
|
| You're really paying for the right to access something as
| long as the underlying capability enabling that right exists.
| It's the kind of thing that allows a lot of wiggle room for
| the sellers and holders of the content.
|
| This is why I prefer buying physical copies of media, like
| DVDs and CDs. It's mine for as long as I can manage it or a
| personal copy of it.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Yeaaa. This bothers me, too, on a conceptual level, and
| I've been thinking about setting up a NAS and doing the
| whole Plex thing. But on a practical level, I've "owned"
| movies and tv shows on (the service formerly known as)
| iTunes for like 15 years without issue. I question whether,
| on average, I'd be able to do as good a job, and how much
| effort it'd take.
| jonhohle wrote:
| If you start and aren't happy with it, at least you
| learned something along the way. Time and format shifting
| are allowed acts under copyright law (though possibly not
| DMCA), so I'd consider it a great way to backup the
| things you bought.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Obligatory IANAL.
|
| Copying something for personal use is perfectly legal,
| it's the _distribution_ of those copies to the public en
| masse that most people end up tripping on.
|
| If you just want to archive your collection of optical
| disks onto a NAS for personal use, you can legally do
| that.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
| jonhohle wrote:
| Also, NAL, but unfortunately, with the exception of Red
| Book CDs and ROM-Data, archiving commercially published
| optical media requires circumvention of copy-protection
| mechanisms. Unfortunately, "space-shifting" was
| considered and explicitly not added to the list of
| recommended exceptions to that rule by the Librarian of
| Congress[0]. It seems like no one appeared to defend this
| position, and it is not one of the exemptions allowed for
| circumventing copy-protected works.
|
| 0 - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/
| 2021-23...
| jerf wrote:
| One of the patterns I've personally really been noticing
| over the past couple of years (not related to any big
| events in those years, just the time period I happened to
| notice them in) is that a lot of theses situations are a
| bona fide slippery slope. The further in you get, the
| harder it is to leave. The sooner you bail out, the less
| it impacts your life at all.
|
| I started my MP3 collection in the late 1990s as CDs
| became practical and computers finally got to the point
| they could rip them. A while back I even went fully legit
| and stripped out all the, ah, "stuff of dubious
| provenance", or, err, you know, a friend may have done
| that. The first streaming music service I've ever used
| was about a year ago and I'm still using it more for
| discovery than as my actual music service, because as a
| result of ~25 years of personal collection building, I
| don't need a streaming service to have probably something
| on the order of two week straight's worth of music I
| like. With a lot of stuff no streaming service has, and
| that not because I'm some sort of exotic collector but
| just because I have things that were popular enough at
| the time but just never made it.
|
| By contrast, if all you did was pay for a subscription
| music service, you're completely beholden to them.
|
| Obviously I can claim no "credit" here; I didn't "bail
| out" of a bad deal in 1998, because that "bad deal"
| wouldn't exist for another decade and a half or so. But
| the fact I didn't do it out of any sort of foresight
| doesn't mean I don't end with the same benefits.
|
| More recently, I've been digging myself out of the video
| subscription crappile, and doing more purchase of media
| instead of using video streaming services. Again, I had a
| buildup from the pre-streaming era I could carry in which
| helps, but at the rate I watch movies anyhow it turns out
| the delta between just buying things as they strike me
| and streaming them is not very large in dollar terms. (I
| don't buy very many things on release day, I do a lot of
| bargain bin surfing for things.)
|
| I'm not saying this to brag, I'm saying it to show the
| point. It extends to a lot of things. Best way not to get
| stuck with subscription features on your car is to put
| your foot down day one and say I'm not buying that. And
| this extends to so many things in life; as we correctly
| tell our children, best way not to get addicted to any
| drugs is to never touch them at all, and that's not
| because of the obvious logical fact that if you never do
| dose 1 you'll never get to dose 1,283, but because there
| really is a slope there. It's a very applicable
| principle.
|
| Note, slippery slope is a _logical_ fallacy, but that
| doesn 't mean there aren't plenty of actual slippery
| slopes in real life. It merely means the fact that you
| are on a slippery slope can not be correctly logically
| argued to imply the _100% probability_ of slipping
| further down. But I 'm not even making a logical argument
| here in that sense. I'm just pointing out that there are
| rather a lot of slippery slopes, and this includes some
| that are really hard to see because they're _brand new_.
| In 2001, there simply _wasn 't_ anybody 20 years down the
| slippery slope of using DRM'd hardware who could
| metaphorically yell up to those of us at the top to tell
| us "Hey, this kinda sucks! Try to avoid this!"
|
| This is one of the greatest challenges of living in the
| late 20th and 21st centuries, honestly. The foresight to
| look at something like "paying for a video subscription"
| and thinking to look 20 years down the road at what
| happens if everyone does this is rare, and not terribly
| well respected when found.
|
| Anyhow, back here on practical Earth land, I really do
| recommend that everyone who is even slightly interested
| look into Plex or an equivalent service, because you can
| turn this process on its head, too. Half-heartedly start
| acquiring your favorite media physically when you see it
| on discount for a couple of years and get it into a Plex
| setup, and before you know it you're far enough down
| _that_ slope that the idea of being independent suddenly
| doesn 't seem so absurd. You can also use the principle
| of a slow buildup over time that adds up to more than
| you'd expect in your favor, too.
| jofla_net wrote:
| great points. I'd even go as far as to say that an apache
| server on a SOC board that you can throw in a closet with
| some drives is enough. I am pretty happy playing music
| through a browser, but i digress. Either way, there are
| tons of simple solutions.
|
| I don't want to bring out the psych again but i cant help
| it. I'd wager that until this point if you didn't or
| don't have your own physical collection its because of
| your personality makeup. Since these rug-pulls haven't
| been going on as often as they have in the last few
| years, if you've been happy being 'pragmatic' and taking
| what the services have to offer then you aren't as
| 'idealistic', otherwise refusing to compromise since you
| down 'own' a copy. Likewise if you're a 'big-picture'
| thinker you can't stand the chance that things become
| unavailable due to forces unseen, whereas if you 'think-
| small' then theres no real risk and we can take companies
| word at face value.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I wouldn't say streaming is more pragmatic; tracks
| regularly aren't available from well known artists (e.g.
| Pink Floyd or The Rolling Stones), and it's almost
| certainly cheaper in the medium term to buy discs,
| especially if you buy used. You can get CDs, DVDs, and
| even BDs for <$2 each from thrift stores or ebay. For
| $15/month, you can get ~90 CDs/year. Within 5 years,
| that's a sizable collection.
|
| Of course maximal pragmatism would just be to download
| it. People are plenty willing to share for free, so
| paying is a form of idealism.
| hooverd wrote:
| There needs to be a truth in labeling act so every DRM'd
| e-book and digital download clearly states that you're
| buying a license to it and not it.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| That is not a hypothetical.
|
| A company I can not mention because I am certified by them
| 14x over did that to me, many times.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| They revoke a license I paid for, then demand I buy another
| license for the exact same thing.
|
| The licenses were NOT supposed to expire.
| jonhohle wrote:
| If only an anonymous account would appear and name names.
|
| I recently watched A Bug's Life with my kids. It's
| actually a pretty good commentary on the abuses of the
| ruling class and the norms inability to see their own
| value: You let one ant stand up to
| us, then they all might stand up! Those puny
| little ants outnumber us a hundred to one
| and if they ever figure that out there goes our
| way of life! It's not about food, it's
| about keeping those ants in line.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Not surprising it has such a deep philosophical core,
| it's a remake of the Seven Samurai.
| dirtyhippiefree wrote:
| I smell Microsoft...
| lsh123 wrote:
| I smell Cisco...
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I smell any company that charges subscription fees to
| creatives for content they're selling from other
| creatives and taking a huge cut of.
| Sakos wrote:
| This is why I can never accept the idea that we're just
| buying a license. Laws need to be made that ensure once you
| buy the rights to access a piece of content, that you keep
| that right regardless of who the current owner is or if the
| distribution method changes. If I buy a book, I never have to
| worry about it being taken away or what happens if somebody
| else gains ownership of a property.
| eek2121 wrote:
| For movies, this is mostly a solved problem. If I buy a
| movie on iTunes, I can access it on other participating
| platforms.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>I can access it on other participating platforms.
|
| "participating" is doing a _LOT_ of work there...
| Joeri wrote:
| I have an album that I bought digitally in itunes that was
| revoked and republished identically by the publisher (i think
| by accident). The consequence is that as far as apple music
| is concerned, that album is not in my account. The physical
| files will still activate and play, but I have to copy them
| manually to every device. Apple support was unable to help.
|
| Microsoft has also multiple times started an ebook store only
| to later shut it down and prevent the purchased books from
| being read. The first time this happened in the mid-2000's I
| lost over a dozen ebooks.
| smugma wrote:
| When did you buy that album? iTunes went DRM free 15+ years
| ago.
| danaris wrote:
| ...and at the time, _all_ previously-bought content
| (AFAIK) was eligible for upgrading to DRM-free status.
|
| And while I've never had this particular weird problem, I
| have _tens of gigabytes_ of music in my iTunes library
| that were never bought from Apple in the first place,
| which sync to my other devices just fine. No manual
| copying required.
|
| And, um...how would you even "manually copy" music to an
| iPhone or iPad? The only way I know of puts it in the
| Files app, rather than the Music app, leaving it unable
| to be played "as music" (though you can, of course, still
| play the audio files one by one).
|
| Something doesn't seem right here.
| likeclockwork wrote:
| You can't manually copy music to an iPhone or iPad? This
| is basic functionality.
| interestica wrote:
| They don't need to revoke a license. They can say the
| "license verification servers are too expensive to keep
| running" so you need to rebuy the product. This is literally
| what Adobe has done with previous versions of their Creative
| Suite.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| And this is also why Adobe software is some of the most
| frequently-pirated software of all time. After all these
| years and all the other examples of the correct way to do
| this, they still refuse to see the light of "free for
| personal use" licensing to get more people trained on and
| in love with your software, so those that do go on to use
| it commercially will demand it and have their companies pay
| the license fees.
| pierat wrote:
| And as someone who pirates, I highly discourage pirating
| proprietary programs that save your data in their locked-
| in formats.
|
| Your data is more important than to be locked into a
| data-roach-motel. The companies know this, and count on
| piracy. From there, the pirate user has MB's of content
| locked into something they cant convert out of. And then,
| it's pretty easy to force a sale, or worse yet, a rental.
|
| Looking at you Adobe, Autodesk, etc.
| chaxor wrote:
| I'm confused. What happened to company 12 initially mentioned
| and content A.4?
| ElongatedMusket wrote:
| Teach a man to buy and you sucker him for a day. Teach a man to
| rent and you sucker him for a lifetime.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| This is why web3 is a thing, so you don't have to make laws,
| the tech can make the laws unnecessary. We are trying to do
| this for content at Darkblock. You buy it, you own it.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > This is why web3 is a thing
|
| Stop trying to make fetch happen.
| megous wrote:
| Pirates had been morally in the clear ever since everyone
| buying any blank storage media had to pay a tax to
| entertainment companies...
| danaris wrote:
| This is only true in some jurisdictions. AFAIK, for instance,
| it is not true in the US.
| neycoda wrote:
| Good luck getting legislation done. Our country thinks
| legislation gets in the way of the free market, stifles
| innovation, and kills jobs.
| _rm wrote:
| Copyright itself is the root of the problem.
|
| It's a completely fictitious right, akin to converting
| elementary school playground "stop copying me!" into a cause of
| action.
|
| The solution to bad legislation isn't more legislation, it's
| throwing those statutes in a bonfire and reverting to common
| law.
| neycoda wrote:
| All rights are fictitious. All laws are made up. They're
| simply defined to provide a guide for liberty and order.
| They're not always enforced. People's defined rights are
| different over countries and years. Slaves had their rights
| defined by others throughout history, and many groups
| considered slavery justified where the master had rights to
| the slave and the slave had rights defined by the master.
| Saying copyright itself is fictitious doesn't mean anything.
|
| Copyright rules make sense in protecting inventors and
| product owners. Maybe you've been neither and can't
| understand how the lack of this protection harms inventors
| and owners to the benefit of plagiarists. It's much easier to
| plagiarize than invent or produce, so without copyright
| protection, inventors and product owners basically become
| giant fat cash cows ready to plunder by passers-by that can
| just copy and paste. Removing copyright would turn the market
| completely feudalist and chaotic.
|
| Throwing copyright statutes away is also chaotic. Reverting
| to common law? I'm not sure what you mean there. Just however
| people feel at the time? We've already evolved past the
| caveman era.
| _rm wrote:
| My man, what was this
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Reverting to common law? I'm not sure what you mean
| there.
|
| Maybe you're not familiar with the term?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
|
| > The defining characteristic of common law is that it
| arises as precedent. Common law courts look to the past
| decisions of courts to synthesize the legal principles of
| past cases
|
| Or was it that you were unclear what _rm specifically was
| saying?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Things were always this far. There has been almost 2 decades
| since Amazon deleted the book 1984 from every Kindle. Since
| then, those things never stopped.
|
| The only thing that is different right now is that some large
| and powerful corporations are being defrauded too, instead of
| just people.
| stillwithit wrote:
| Stop hiding reality behind euphemism.
|
| The rich are just people.
|
| The sooner we accept that and dispose of the bizarre
| "deification" of the rich the sooner we can discuss
| deprecation of their influence and reach.
|
| The apathetic kowtow to a handful of aging out government
| brown nosers who lobby to insulate themselves is sad.
|
| 1980s Reagan economy is not immutable physics and we have no
| obligation to believe the stories of the rich about their
| success. There's a whole lot of behavioral science being
| leveraged, and intentional PR propaganda tossed around to
| obfuscate the rich are "just people"
| andrewflnr wrote:
| You're conflating "large and powerful corporations" with
| "rich people". This is a mistake. Your post is not really
| wrong, but doesn't address anything in the one you replied
| to.
| tarsinge wrote:
| What are large and powerful corporations under the hood?
| It's only an abstraction to facilitate business, but the
| reality is just a few people making decisions. Don't make
| the mistake of giving a physical existence to companies.
| stillwithit wrote:
| Thanks for reinforcing my point about over reliance on
| euphemisms.
|
| "Rich people" in a fiat economy is due to the valuation
| of their assets, often but always, large stakes in
| corporations.
|
| All of which is politically correct hallucination. None
| of it exists as immutable physics.
|
| The mistake is yours for memorizing vacuous political
| statements.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Enough people believe the "hallucination" for rich
| corporations to behave noticeably differently from rich
| people, notably in their response to being defrauded,
| which is how you got onto this topic. I'm not even trying
| to talk morals here, just make accurate explanations and
| predictions.
| stillwithit wrote:
| Oh you've polled all the people and learned they really
| believe? Most just "follow orders" and I'm guessing if
| pressed would see no value to the hallucination. Anti-
| corporatism is everywhere; how many actually believe as
| you say? I doubt that many believe and it really just
| seems beneficial for you to patronize and "correct"
| others.
|
| Accuracy relative to the dying and long dead's ignorant
| political babble is a ridiculous stat to min/max to dial
| in correctness. Stay in the centrist lane!
|
| Rather than have a forward facing conversation, you reach
| for history. There's little point in continuing this
| conversation
| ithkuil wrote:
| I do agree with your take. Large corporation have a
| mechanism of their own that will tend to persist even as
| people in charge get rotated out.
|
| That said:
|
| "Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining
| individual profit without individual responsibility."
| Ambrose Bierce 1906
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Sure, and it would be great to see some combination of
| reduced profit and increased responsibility. As others in
| this thread have mentioned, there's no real reason to
| play along with the illusion that corporations are
| people. They should have fewer rights than humans, and
| the government should play rougher with them when they
| get out of line.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| On this case, the rich were defrauded too, just like every
| person.
|
| Some of them were also doing the defrauding, and got a
| positive net profit, while many weren't. Things are way
| more complex than "the rich did it".
| virgilp wrote:
| It's also relatively easy to write this legislation. If you:
|
| - sold licenses that are no longer usable to access the work
| (i.e. if you invalidate by any means already sold licenses)
|
| - don't put work in the public domain/don't make it freely
| usable without a license when the copyright expires
|
| then you lose the protection of copyright & associated
| (DRM/reverse engineering) laws for said works. Multiple
| violations can extend that to "all your works".
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| It's no wonder that _certain parties_ are so very interested in
| gutting consumer protections in US government at every level so
| they can continue these consumer-hostile practices
| unchallenged, but it's hard to get voters to care about these
| issues, especially in a two-party system.
| steelframe wrote:
| > There should be legislation preventing this
|
| At this point I'd rather the legislature (1) just stop, and
| then maybe (2) roll back what's broken. Don't try to follow up
| horrendously broken laws like the DMCA with more broken laws to
| try to arbitrarily patch things up. I'll vote for any
| politicians who advocate for picking a commit sometime before
| the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and doing a git --hard
| reset to that.
| SSLy wrote:
| dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578872
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| TIf I copy the money in someone's bank account - it's just
| numbers, after all - I haven't actually stolen anything. So that
| must be ok?
|
| TBH I would be ok with that. But - inexplicably - the pro-piracy
| people never are.
|
| How about the videos of your personal sexy times on your phone?
|
| Ah but wait! Money has value! No, money does not have value.
| Money is a special kind of resource-constrained IP with a unique
| protection mechanism and tightly controlled access rights. If it
| were possible to hack that system - and some people have done
| this - it's still just numbers with no more "value" than any
| other numbers.
|
| Either you accept that ownership and access control are valid
| ways to manage access to resources, or you go full post-scarcity
| neo-communist and destroy the concept of ownership altogether.
|
| Anything else is hypocrisy.
|
| The fact that most IP is owned by terrible people and doesn't
| benefit the artists _is a different argument._ That 's an
| argument against wealth capture, political inequality, and
| rentier capitalism - a much bigger issue with relevance across
| multiple domains.
|
| The real tell is that this is only ever about creative and never
| expands into wider questions of ownership and resource control.
|
| My suspicion is that non-creative people resent the apparent
| agency and freedom that creatives have, and this is always more
| about that resentment than some supposed question around IP.
|
| Basically some guy who makes music is an easier target than CEO
| bro, and it's always easier to punch down than up.
| rmellow wrote:
| Interesting analogy with money but I don't think it holds up.
|
| Money requires scarcity, otherwise its utility goes down. En
| masse, money copying would bring about hyper inflation very
| quickly. Society loses.
|
| On the other hand, what work of art requires scarcity to be
| enjoyed? Personal sexy videos don't count here, as that's a
| privacy matter not a scarcity issue.
|
| I can see that argument working for the fashion industry for
| example: buying clothes from an exclusive designer has the
| value of making you look unique. If suddenly that outfit gets
| copied and everyone is wearing knockoffs, you no longer look
| unique.
|
| However if someone pays to rent a movie, and someone else
| pirates it, none of the consumers lost. The copyright owner
| only loses if a sale would've otherwise happened.
|
| So I think that outcomes matter according to specific
| scenarios, and showing damage should be essential in court
| cases. Too many innocents have their lives ruined by inflated
| piracy claims that truly caused little damage.
| MoonlitKnight wrote:
| Congratulations, you've realized that copying some data can be
| immoral while copying other data isn't. Neither of your
| examples of money or intimate videos has anything to do with
| copyright, so they're completely irrelevant to what's being
| discussed.
| apienx wrote:
| The definition of private property is defined by political
| systems, which are shaped by cultural norms and values. It's
| unlikely that humanity will still treat intellectual output as
| private property centuries from now. The digital (and network)
| revolution are paradigm shifts, and the latter can take a very
| long to play out.
|
| That said, financially supporting worthwhile projects is a moral
| duty. So please do your part.
| einpoklum wrote:
| 1. Piracy is when guys in ships board another ship and take its
| cargo. Copying files is not piracy.
|
| 2. Sharing is caring and information wants to be free.
|
| 3. La propriete, c'est le vol!
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_propriete,_c'est_le_vol_!
|
| https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Joseph-Proudhon
| muzani wrote:
| Where I come from, both parties have to consent. The buyer says
| "I purchase this for $10". The seller says "I purchase for $10."
| You have a valid sale. Modern forms involve giving the money,
| then getting a receipt.
|
| Here's the problem - the seller can be a thief. The common forms
| of seller theft is selling something of less value than marketed,
| or with conditions that were not brought up earlier (like no
| repair).
|
| Being illegal isn't be the only measure of theft, not in some
| societies. You can pirate something without theft -- as long as
| the seller consents to it. It won't be legal if there's no
| written agreement of consent. Some companies have this model
| where you can illegally use their software forever, but have to
| pay for a license. They want some of the richer people to pay,
| but the law doesn't recognize this selective consent, so it's
| enforced selectively.
|
| But in OP's case, there's no valid transaction possible in some
| situations. They're not pirating nice guy WinRAR. The seller
| doesn't want to consent and the buyer won't consent. Because
| there's no possible option, the pirate assumes it belongs to
| nobody and takes it.
|
| Thieves will often justify a theft, either by saying nobody owns
| it or that it belonged to them. There's a whole hill of
| philosophy here about what private property means. Taking back
| your homeland is not theft, because it's yours. That's why we
| have laws so a third party can judge these things.
|
| But you know, maybe just come to terms that stealing isn't always
| unethical. Instead of saying piracy isn't stealing, it's more
| like piracy isn't unethical. It's pedantic, but solves a lot of
| the nitpicks people have on the topic.
| lemper wrote:
| you know, my default stance is pirating is the way. i don't give
| a shit who "owns" the media. if it's in my harddisk, it should
| not go away unless I delete it or the system (fs / hw / what have
| you) is kill. good thing I don't enjoy entertainment like movies
| or music. but in the small chance I like it, I'd go to the store,
| get the disk, rip it or just torrent it.
|
| but bro! that's immoral and you will suffer in hell!
|
| nah bro, we're already in hell.
|
| bro! them popos will catch your ass and put you in jail!
|
| nah bro, if they don't know, it's not illegal.
| dindobre wrote:
| The social contract is so broken that I'm not surprised that
| piracy is rampant. I justify it (and I make games). It has all
| become a matter of leverage, I truly believe that if some
| companies (or people) could point a gun to our heads they would,
| and it shows in the way they operate.
|
| And no, it's not always "it's just profit", sometimes it's a
| shortsighted chase of the next stock value high with complete
| disregard for the future since lack of accountability is pretty
| much built-in into the higher classes of managers
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Profit or stock value is what is measured, sociopathy is what's
| driving it and lack of accountability enables it.
| csydas wrote:
| It's endemic for sure -- I download pirated stuff yes, but as I
| got older, I really did try to make an effort to use streaming
| services, movie/media stores, app stores, etc. Everything about
| it was so awful and ridiculous that it just wasn't worth my
| time to deal with the frustrations and more importantly the
| ever increasing costs and advertisement non-sense. Having an
| entire TV series I was watching suddenly vanish from the
| provider library in between episodes, shows/music I had used
| the applications own "download to local device" feature
| vanished just because I was traveling and suddenly I was not
| approved to watch/listen to the stuff I had paid for, constant
| advertisements and pushes for more subscriptions, it was
| absolutely asinine.
|
| I do continue to download some pirated items but largely I just
| checked out of modern media mostly because the cost of
| participation is too much. At least online there are some
| services that video essayists release on which aren't too bad
| (Nebula isn't horrible, but still is a bit annoying).
|
| I'm fearful of the day that searching "[some specific functions
| I want] + FOSS" and looking for repositories that have what I'm
| hoping for will stop working, since it's been fairly successful
| for me to find software that doesn't come with all the modern
| tech world non-sense. Some of the most simple applications like
| DaisyDisk for macOS or the Redirector plugins for browsers are
| absolute gems that have made my life objectively better and
| more convenient, and the teams behind these programs have shown
| repeatedly they aren't interested in anything else besides just
| having their programs work. It was very easy decision to donate
| to these teams/buy the apps because it was the most simple
| transaction ever, and the programs work as well or better than
| they did when I first installed them. Same with games from GOG
| -- I love that I have bought HoMM3 one time, and I think more
| than a decade later, I can still use the same installer, get
| the installer again, and enjoy my game wherever I want, and
| it's a completed game that can be further improved by mods.
|
| Real and workable models for selling tech exist and it works
| without DRM -- I know for corporations it's not enough money
| coming in and they "need" to monetize every last drop of blood
| out of everything, but it's not like these business models are
| impossible or even bad; just different and a bit calmer than
| the corporate non-sense we have today. And the alternative
| models without DRM and data pilfering are definitely something
| I am willing to buy into, since there looks to be a pretty damn
| good chance I'll be able to actually use the stuff I'm buying
| how I want to.
| dindobre wrote:
| I agree, real and workable models do exist. The problem stems
| from regulatory capture, unbalanced leverage, and long-term
| unaccountability of the "higher ups", in my opinion.
| m12k wrote:
| Gabe Newell rightly pointed out that piracy is a service
| problem. People pirate if getting access the legal way is
| prohibitively expensive or too much of a hassle. I can easily
| get access to any game I care about at a reasonable price on
| Steam. I can listen to any music I care about at a reasonable
| price on Spotify.
|
| The same could almost be said of movies and TV series on
| Netflix years ago, but hasn't been remotely true for a while
| now, ever since the splintering of streaming into warring
| content owner kingdoms.
|
| Guess which types of media I haven't even considered pirating,
| and which media I've given up on getting legally.
| paledot wrote:
| I've been in your camp on all fronts for a while, but Spotify
| has been getting worse and more expensive, and there are some
| meaningful gaps in their catalog. I got rid of my CDs a
| decade+ ago, but I think it's time to start buying and
| ripping music again.
|
| Unfortunately, Plex _also_ wants to charge me to stream my
| own music, so the first step to find a new media player that
| isn 't subject to enshittification.
| scruple wrote:
| Jellyfin.
|
| https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
| pierat wrote:
| I also use Navidrome for my music. Supports the Subsonic
| API too.
|
| Jellyfin and I had a bad going-through with handling.
| Minutes to pull up even a single discography. These days,
| it plays videos and that's it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Unfortunately, Plex also wants to charge me to stream my
| own music, so the first step to find a new media player
| that isn 't subject to enshittification._
|
| Shit. I was considering switching my music library over the
| Plex, since they already both live on the same hard
| drive...
| tuetuopay wrote:
| I'm on the same boat as you. I don't pirate games or music
| anymore, and I've not done so for years. However, for movies
| and TV shows it's another story. I don't watch enough of them
| to warrant a single subscriptions, let alone multiple to
| watch the few shows and movies that do interest me and never
| are on the same platform.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| It can't be worse than in the mid-90's (at least in relative
| numbers, of course absolute numbers will be much higher because
| the market is so much bigger now).
|
| Ever since services like Steam existed I have pretty much
| pirated zero games, it's just too much hassle compared to
| clicking the Buy button on Steam (and if it's too expensive,
| the next season sale is always just around the corner). In
| comparison, my 90's self owned pretty much zero bought games.
|
| Or as our Lord and Saviour Gaben ;) said:
|
| "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."
|
| Still spot on.
| dindobre wrote:
| I also appreciate Gaben, but we can't rely on enlightened
| despots, it just leaves room for bad actors to eventually
| ruin things.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Of course, but since the Steam model works so well one
| wonders why everybody else is stumbling along instead of
| "just" copying it. Steam is pretty much the only platform
| where I don't care that I'm constantly bombarded with
| "targeted ads" for instance, I'm actually most of the time
| interested in what the Steam recommendation algorithm has
| in store for me.
| unaindz wrote:
| The "ads" on steam are so good that piracy websites use
| steam to recomend new releases.
| sophacles wrote:
| I wouldn't even call it "bombarded". I only get ads when
| i click on "store", as in I signal "I'm interested in
| spending money, what do you have?" - that's actually a
| reasonable time to get ads.
| dleslie wrote:
| > Of course, but since the Steam model works so well one
| wonders why everybody else is stumbling along instead of
| "just" copying it.
|
| Origin, Blizzard, uPlay et al failed to challenge Steam
| largely because they lack both features and catalog; it's
| not clear they even intended to take on Steam, because of
| the lack of content from other publishers.
|
| EGS is worth special attention because it both has
| content from other publishers and has dumped considerable
| cash into the goal of unseating Steam. I think it comes
| down to features: the EGS store has generally been a sub-
| par experience, and they purposefully refused to
| implement features like Community Scores, Forums, and
| other metasocial features that make Steam what it is.
|
| They underestimate the value of player reviews, community
| scoring, forums, guides, workshop and so on. Even if most
| of users of most games don't avail themselves of those
| features, they're important features for retaining the
| most die-hard of users; who in turn form the core of the
| social draw to use Steam.
| tipsydoo wrote:
| Epic Games Store comes to mind, along with dozens of
| other smaller/defunct enterprises. There's a rumor that
| Gamestop is going to make one that's crypto-enabled
| somehow. The problems remain; ask anyone who's been
| banned by Valve how they feel about their Steam library
| being rendered completely inaccessible.
| crashmat wrote:
| The problem is it's incredibly hard to create a semi-
| ethical company like steam without an enlightened despot.
| raincole wrote:
| Yeah, of course Gaben will say that (while providing
| developers a Steam DRM mechanism). A good PR example: he
| knows the importance of antipiracy, but he also knows the
| importance of downplaying it to not irritate the gamers.
| unaindz wrote:
| The steam drm is a joke and I think it's on purpose. It
| takes a few minutes to use a steam emulator and overcome
| it.
| paledot wrote:
| Publishers do also have the option of including their own
| DRM, _which Steam proactively discloses_ , one of the
| things that I love most about it. But it's rare enough
| (basically just Ubisoft and EA) that I can fully boycott
| anything with that label without feeling like I'm missing
| out.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| DRM is optional for Steam games, I think that's a pretty
| good balance between the interest of game developers vs the
| interest of user, it's an issue between users and game
| devs, not between users and Steam.
|
| The more important point is though that the Steam DRM is
| hassle-free for the user. For instance games (with macOS
| ports) I already bought for PC I can also just install on
| my Mac, with save games automatically shared between the
| two. I don't have to buy a separate Mac version (as would
| be the case with Xbox vs Playstation), nor do I need to pay
| extra, so there's no incentive to pirate the Mac version.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| DRM could also be executed in a way that makes it
| impossible for companies to claw back the content. DVDs
| use DRM and all it does is restrict what devices can
| access it, but it can't be retroactively clawed back.
| Consumers understanding when that is the case is the
| problem. They just assume it can't be clawed back or they
| just think it's very unlikely, and only get mad when it
| happens. Unexpected restrictions in content is a
| centralized platform thing in general and can happen with
| your own content on any cloud storage provider for
| example, it isn't necessarily a DRM problem.
| redman25 wrote:
| Valve can take away software you've rightfully purchased as
| well. I don't know that they are the holy grail either even
| though they're commendable for what they've done with gaming
| on Linux. I bought CS GO years ago but after the CS 2
| transition, I was no longer able to play the game since it
| became Windows and Linux only.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _it 's just too much hassle compared to clicking the Buy
| button on Steam_
|
| Game piracy today is still easier than clicking the buy
| button, and it's also free. We're not ripping individual
| files from sites anymore these days, most games are neatly
| packaged up into one-click install repacks.
| kibwen wrote:
| Precisely. Corporations are purely sociopathic entities; they
| would kidnap us off the street and blend our bodies into bloody
| slurry if they thought it might make them a single penny of
| profit. There is no use treating your relationship with
| corporate entities as anything other than strictly adversarial.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I buy games, but not until there is a way to pirate them first.
| I just want to be sure that I can play what I buy forever and
| ever and the way I like it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Why is this even confusing? Piracy is piracy, it is the act of
| consuming products outside of the framework that enabled the
| funding for creation of these products. And the owning was always
| about owning the rights to consume some product within some
| framework, no one ever claimed that you own an album in the sense
| that you can do whatever you like to do with it if you paid
| 19.99$.
|
| If you want to actually own an album, you do it like Martin
| Shkreli purchasing the album from Wu-Tang Clan. Pay 4 million
| dollars and it's all yours.
|
| Useless discussions, honestly. It's like claiming that Walter
| White did not actually die on Breaking bad.
| xigoi wrote:
| If I buy a book, I can read it as many times as I want, lend it
| to other people or even burn it in a fireplace if I want to.
| Why shouldn't these rights extend to digital media?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I think it should. Go ahead and implement it, then get
| content producers distribute their work in your framework.
| Good luck.
| epups wrote:
| It sounds to me like you are trying to say that because
| technology exists to enforce oppressive stances against
| basic consumer rights we all had just a few years ago, we
| should also not make use of technology that exists to
| circumvent this attack.
|
| Is your argument solely based on "it is, therefore it
| should be", or is there more to it?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I think you are misrepresenting the situation and
| misreading what I said.
|
| What I say is, if you don't like how Oppenheimer was
| funded, produced and then how they tried to collect money
| from you when you wanted to see it then you should fund
| and produce your own movie and distribute it the way you
| see fit. Upload it to YouTube, share a magnet link -
| whatever. Nothing stops you from not participating in the
| DRM stuff.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Where does this logic end? If you don't like what the
| government is doing, start your own? There is a huge
| imbalance between corporation and consumer where decades
| of generational wealth allows a film like Oppenheimer to
| be made. It's completely ridiculous to tell people
| struggling to pay their rent that they should just make
| their own blockbuster film if they don't want to be dirty
| thieves.
|
| Content distribution has gotten worse overtime to the
| benefit of nobody but the richest people.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| A book carries the same licensing terms as a DVD and as most
| digital media. However, the implementation of some of these
| terms is much easier or harder depending on the actual
| medium. It's easy to lend a book, it's hard to achieve the
| same thing with digital media. But in the EU at least, if a
| platform supports a way for a user to transfer their ability
| to a different user, then re-selling or lending through this
| mechanism is legal.
|
| The real abuse from digital media sales is the seller
| maintaing the right to revoke access to the work arbitrarily.
| creesch wrote:
| > act of consuming products outside of the framework that
| enabled the funding for creation of these products.
|
| Are you a corporate lawyer? Because this sentence really
| doesn't mean anything but can be made to mean a lot depending
| on the context you decide to frame it in.
|
| Regardless of that, it highlights the fact that you haven
| actually read the article itself. Which I highly suggest as it
| does a good job of pointing out a big issue with how that
| framework currently works towards consumers.
| mrtksn wrote:
| This sentence addresses exactly the content of the article:
| The framework within stuff is funded, created and later
| compensated.
|
| The article is a ramble on the issues of implementation of
| the enforcement. Only if people would play along we wouldn't
| have ushers in the cinema, only if people would play along we
| wouldn't have cashiers but a box where people put the money
| in and take out the change.
|
| Implementation of DRM etc. is quite low quality and is prone
| to issues. So? Those unhappy should simply avoid content made
| with that business model and framework of tools enforcing it.
|
| The ad-supported model gained a lot of traction and people
| make a lot of DRM-free content that is distributed for free
| in exchange of editorial influence or distribution influence.
| Some even see great success in it, there are YouTube content
| producers who can afford to make content with considerable
| production value.
|
| If you like what you get stick with it, if you don't - don't.
| Produce the stuff the way you think should be produced and
| distribute it the way you think should be distributed, no one
| is forcing you to use DRM or whatever. That's just a tool
| that you might choose to use in hope that people will agree
| to pay you this way.
| creesch wrote:
| So you are saying that you have no issue with a framework
| where people have put money towards material (funded it)
| but can at any future time be denied access to that
| content?
|
| Furthermore I still believe you haven't actually read the
| article. As you are heavily focused on what appears to be
| media content. Where the article touches on digital
| material in general like software.
|
| In general the article does a good job of highlighting an
| issue the sort of framework that is widely prevelant.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sure, the current state does have issues. Also, I don't
| care much about that and since my solution to it is that
| don't purchase it if you don't like the rules.
|
| Personally, I'm more concerned on fair use and the impact
| on the society when a product(media or software) is
| withheld geographically or produced with agenda beyond
| collecting direct payments. The fair use is more
| interesting one, when a digital product is widely
| successful it does have cultural impact on the society
| and IMHO it should become public domain at some point
| because the society becomes like a minefield for the
| other creatives.
|
| I don't really care much about the tragedy of not being
| able to watch a movie years later after you paid as much
| as hamburger for it. It is not a real issue and you
| should have read the fineprint.
| creesch wrote:
| To me, the points you personally care about are very much
| related to the issues discussed in the article.
|
| Geographic restrictions are very much driven by the same
| motivators that result in DRM and revokable content
|
| You seek to make a distinction here that simply isn't
| there.
| dns_snek wrote:
| > And the owning was always about owning the rights to consume
| some product within some framework
|
| You missed the point. There is not supposed to be a "framework"
| when it comes to personal use. When you buy a CD, you can copy
| it to all of your personal devices, archive it, and listen to
| it unrestricted at any time, at any geographical location until
| the end of time. You can transcode it, remix it, or edit it for
| your personal enjoyment. You _own_ your personal copy and you
| can do with it as you wish.
|
| These are things that you're lawfully allowed to do with your
| _licensed copy_ , if it wasn't for digital distribution and DRM
| which are now adding restrictions that can permanently revoke
| your rights to access the media at any time.
| eadmund wrote:
| I agree with the substantive point that these DRM-enabled
| shenanigans are a bad thing but I think putting things this way
| is unproductive:
|
| > I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered
| products should come with this disclaimer:
|
| > > WARNING: THIS DEVICE'S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION
| WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET
| NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF
| THE WORLD'S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS
| DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR
| THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE -- BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE
| OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN
| HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE
| THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY'RE GETTING A
| TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT'LL MUFFLE YOUR
| WHIMPERS.
|
| Leaving it as 'WARNING: THIS DEVICE'S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO
| REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE. YOU WILL RENT, NOT OWN, ANYTHING YOU
| PURCHASE FOR IT.' would be honest.
|
| Ditto 'enshittification,' ditto _particularly_ 'most
| guillotineable executive,' ditto 'deserves to be staked out over
| and anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup.' These are
| not the words of a mature adult making a mature point: they are
| the words of a performance artist. One's opponents are human
| beings too.
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| Childish? Yes.
|
| Understandable? Also yes.
|
| Don't forget defeating DRM for ethical purposes is a grey area.
| Maybe even illegal.
|
| Example: those trains in Poland [referred in the article]. I
| think what the company did by contracting the hardware hackers
| to investigate (by RE) what was going on was illegal, and what
| they did was illegal too.
|
| What if they hadn't? The company would have lost the support
| contract.
|
| The law is out of sync with morals and what's better for
| society.
|
| So, while not recommended, the tone is acceptable or, at least,
| understandable.
| ozim wrote:
| I was thinking the same.
|
| But people are convinced that these CEO types or high ranking
| MBA employees don't look down on customers or employees as
| people but as numbers in excel.
|
| So it is super hard to treat them as humans too.
| mindslight wrote:
| If we're debating how to optimize that 'disclaimer', start with
| capitalizing it properly. All caps is HOSTILE YELLING and big
| blocks of it are generally meant to be skipped over. Second,
| don't think of it as a separate disclaimer - emphasize the
| relevant details right in the review itself!
|
| "The device has great battery life, tactile controls, and a
| responsive UI. But the main way of getting music on the device
| is a proprietary 'media store' that lets you rent access to
| albums for some unknown time. Loading your music collection as
| standard mp3 or flac files is currently possible, but due to
| security vulnerabilities in the client software this option may
| disappear at any time the manufacturer wants to force you into
| the more profitable option. The MSRP is $200 but the expected
| TCO of this device will be upwards of $1200 or more assuming
| you want to listen to a modest 50 albums."
| motbus3 wrote:
| I honestly think that "perpetual until something" licenses should
| be forbidden or at least should guarantee the full price paid
| back.
| igiveup wrote:
| Human laws do not follow laws of nature, or laws of logic. Trying
| to rationalize why something is or isn't owning or stealing is a
| misunderstanding.
|
| "It is not missing anywhere, so it isn't stealing" does not
| apply. What applies is more like "This paper says it is stealing,
| so it is." The paper says it because a human wrote it there, as a
| result of whatever complexity going on in their natural neural
| network.
|
| Please notice I didn't say "right", "wrong", "good", or "bad"
| anywhere.
| berkes wrote:
| We write these laws on paper, and not on two stone tablets
| because they aren't fixed.
|
| You make it sound like "once it's written down, that's how it
| is. forever". Which is also not how law works (not even how
| religious "laws" work).
| igiveup wrote:
| To me, it sounds more like you're saying the same thing as
| me: It is not a law of nature, it is text on paper, a human
| fiction. Yet, somehow you manage to disagree with me. How did
| that happen?
| dathinab wrote:
| piracy was never stealing, stealing requires the removal of where
| it comes from, which copies do fundamentally not do
|
| piracy is causing hypothetical financial damage by braking some
| laws
|
| with the irony that sometimes there is no financial damage, or
| that the damage is such a small fraction of the claimed damage to
| a point where persuading it should make no sense
|
| through sometimes it also can be big enough to destroy companies
| delusional wrote:
| It's interesting that America, steeped in their self described
| "liberalism" and "market economy" has become a nation of renters.
| You don't own anything, but rent it. If you need to transport
| yourself, you rent an uber using your phone which is rented from
| google, on the internet connection rented from AT&T.
|
| It's important to note that I'm not saying you need to own a car
| to live up to the American ideal, but you'd expect the freedom
| conscious American to demand rights, making them the true owners
| of their possessions. You'd expect the American to demand
| guaranteed access to transportation.
| tgv wrote:
| Taking a book from the library without a library subscription and
| returning it is still stealing.
|
| That corps can brick the device you paid for or block access to
| your media is an different matter.
| berkes wrote:
| The comparison is off.
|
| The comparison should be "the library has plenty of copies of a
| book but does not allow anyone to borrow it, regardless of if
| they have a subscription. Someone takes it out, returns it". Is
| that stealing? It might be, IDK, but is certainly more complex
| than your example.
| tgv wrote:
| No, that's the second part: restricting access. If a library
| would not allow a paying subscriber to lend books, they would
| break the contract. Same for bricked phones or DRM.
|
| But "piracy", is it's meant here, is the first part:
| lending/taking without paying.
|
| It's not meant as a blanket condemnation of piracy, and
| certainly not as support for subscription access, but as a
| counter-example against the headline: even if you don't own,
| piracy still can be stealing.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| I agree with the sentiments of most points in this article but
| this one irks me:
|
| > Imagine putting years of your life into making a program -
| showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own
| breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working
| 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and
| driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a
| man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to
| get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!
|
| Different perspective: Imagine you've been so lucky that you were
| able to work on a program and GET PAID for it irrespective if it
| will turn out to be a flop or even deemed so bad that it's more
| worthwhile to write off than release. Imagine being so lucky that
| during the COVID-19 pandemic where most people were left without
| job and/or income you still had the privilege to show up on set
| at 5AM and do a 16-hour work shift and provide food on the table
| for your kids so they can eat a healthy breakfast. Talk about
| privilege and luck that you've ended up in a position in life
| that enables you this job security in life which 99.99% of humans
| can only dream of.
| Solvency wrote:
| This reeks of corporate bootlicking because we should be so
| "lucky" we're not part of the poor and starving class in 2023.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| If you work for someone else you're entitled to get a fair
| payment for your time and skill. If you want more than that
| go and create your own business.
| leonroy wrote:
| That's disingenuous - part of your compensation at many
| companies involves the expectation that the work is
| rewarding or its outcome has some non-monetary
| compensation. This is especially true in entertainment and
| media industries where workers will even be asked to work
| at a discount for the prestige.
|
| Otherwise why do finance have to pay engineers more (at
| least here in London) or why are the interesting jobs
| nearly always paying below market?
|
| If the show or film was cancelled _after_ the worker signed
| a contract to work, the expectation of the worker when they
| signed up was that said work will see the light of day.
| Part of the compensation would be having the work on your
| CV etc and the prestige of your name on the credits.
|
| The studio has reneged on an expectation the worker had
| when they accepted the contract and did not compensate them
| fairly for this new risk.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| > Otherwise why do finance have to pay engineers more (at
| least here in London)
|
| Because of the demand and supply curve. If you require
| people in the city every day your hiring pool is less, if
| you require SC clearance your hiring pool is smaller, if
| you require some finance knowledge or experience of
| working on a trade floor then your hiring pool is
| smaller. > or why are the interesting
| jobs nearly always paying below market?
|
| That's not true, unless you refer to startups by
| "interesting" jobs and then part of the deal is equity
| with a chance to make the engineers retire 30 years
| earlier than normal workers. Not a risk worth for
| everyone but it's there for those you want it.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| Parent poster wasn't nearly that bent over.
|
| The employee doesn't get to decide what happens to the
| product. Simple as. Employees are workers on a field.
|
| Is that entirely fair? Depends only on whether everyone has
| equal opportunity to work on something else without serious
| repercussions. And we should work towards that.
|
| In this case, as in many others, Hollywood is a racket and
| there are limited alternatives, so it's somewhat unfair. But
| there are multiple studios and you can always choose to toil
| on someone else's field.
| dguest wrote:
| I know people with this perspective. It's healthy, especially
| in the startup world where a good fraction of companies fizzle
| without making a profit.
|
| I also know a lot of people (scientists, and many
| humanitarians, for example) who really aren't motivated by
| getting payed beyond a basic subsistence. They could make more
| money, and have more stable careers elsewhere. They do what
| they do for a lot of other reasons: status, ideals, curiosity,
| etc. Maybe they are just victims in a cold capitalist world
| that exploits them, but they get a lot done.
|
| Do these people exist in entertainment? Would we loose
| something if they become disillusioned? Should they be
| calculating their input based on what they need to keep food on
| the table and pay coming in, or should they feel some (maybe
| irrational) connection to the larger project?
| znpy wrote:
| "If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing" is my new
| favourite slogan. Yahrrr!
| edwinjm wrote:
| > Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly,
| nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person
| at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that
| there are no penalties for doing so...
|
| At least in Europe, a company can't just remove features from a
| device.
|
| If a product doesn't do what you can reasonably expect, this is
| considered fraud and you can go back to the store and demand
| compensation.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| The field of interpretation for "can reasonably expect" is very
| wide though, how many devices you own are still receiving
| security updates?
| nurettin wrote:
| Calling rentals "buying" should be illegal, because apparently
| people aren't equipped to understand the nature of their
| transaction by description.
| rezonant wrote:
| This is excellent. Doctorow doesn't disappoint.
| senectus1 wrote:
| Pithy, but it wont pass muster in court.
| bohadi wrote:
| as a longtime, proud, and noble pirate; attempts at moral
| justification or condemnation are simply gratuitous and i'm
| certain many like me feel the same
| tomohawk wrote:
| > the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern
| California
|
| This guy has a lot of good points, but this is way over the line.
| germandiago wrote:
| wow, so true.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It's a false dichotomy.
|
| Snapping features from paid-for devices, or taking away content
| people paid for, is shitty and should be legally banned.
|
| DRM is a tool, like an electric drill, and you can use it to
| build a house or kill someone. I'm happy to pay less to rent a
| film online subject to constraints such as time or single device,
| and for DRM to enforce that. I reject the idea that my printer
| stops working because I used third-party ink. DRM is an
| implementation detail.
|
| Finally, there's nothing noble about piracy, even if you pirate
| things from asshole corporations. I'll agree that it is less bad
| in the context, but still. Victimless crime or not, someone owns
| IP to whatever you are after, and using it without their
| permission is not some kind of civil disobedience.
| jdright wrote:
| "But I think this borders on the alarmist: "It's worse with
| video, where switching away from Media Center PC might cost you
| the footage of your son's first steps, your sister's wedding,
| your holiday films."
|
| Even the darkest tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists don't suggest
| that Microsoft is going to hold my WMV-encoded home videos
| hostage. But you seem to be taking it even further, somehow tying
| it to the Media Center itself. Please explain.
|
| Posted by: Chris Anderson"
|
| to demonstrate how blind-sided or too naive or optimistic, a
| supposed technology-aware person can be.
| balderdash wrote:
| It feel like some basic consumer disclosure/protections would be
| a good start - you can't use the word "buy" unless the purchaser
| truly has perpetual irrevocable use of the asset - other wise you
| have to use the word "rent" and simple disclaimer box with the
| length of the rental period if and how it can be canceled, and
| what remedies (if any) are provided if the rental is terminated
| early.
|
| Rent movie XYZ for $x
|
| Rental period: perpetual
|
| Cancelable: at will with x days notice
|
| Remedies if cancelled early: none
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| you can, but the reality is that
|
| 1. most consumers don't care. For them if it's longer than some
| months it's basicaly perpetual. Buying for them is a raw deal
| because they treat media like a rental and forget about the
| purchase in the long run.
|
| 2. streaming services pretty much "solved" this problem
| already. There's no notion of owning anything on Netflix and
| people are fine with that. The age of digital purchases is
| fading (except maybe for games. But even then, there are more
| f2p models out there).
| kgwxd wrote:
| Copying isn't stealing, full stop. But this new catch phrase is
| just stupid. It sounds like one of those "checkmate atheist"
| gottcha's. A conditional license, no matter how shitty the terms,
| is what you're buying, you only assumed you were buying something
| more. It does not then follow that "pirating isn't stealing",
| that's just a fact that stands on its own.
| dgudkov wrote:
| Warning: unpopular opinion that you won't like.
|
| If the audience of HN were writers, singers, and artists, people
| who know what it's like when the fruits of your work are stolen
| and you barely make any money (I have friends like that), the
| sentiment would've been quite different. But software developers
| can't relate to this and that's why they are so pro-piracy. They
| get a paycheck every month or bi-weekly and never face a
| situation when their intellectual work is stolen against their
| will and offered to their employer for free and the employer now
| cuts the paycheck in half because why pay if you can get it for
| free.
|
| I'm not saying the current situation with content consumption is
| ideal. Big corps have no shame in many ways. But sometimes both
| sides can be wrong. And this is exactly what I'm seeing here.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The question is always: how much money would those individuals
| make if their work wouldn't be pirated. It's much more likely
| that they would just barely survive like they do now instead of
| raking in the big moneyz. Sometimes it's not piracy that's the
| problem, but simply that the art/content is unpopular, or a bad
| business model was chosen.
|
| > when their intellectual work is stolen against their will and
| offered to their employer for free and the employer now cuts
| the paycheck in half because why pay if you can get it for free
|
| Your friends should get a lawyer. This is a different case than
| people "pirating" content because the content is locked
| exclusively behind yet another service subscription.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I agree. It's always very curious to see the way these internet
| forums (HN, Reddit, Twitter, etc) justify piracy. Every thread
| about Spotify for instance is full of people upset that they
| don't pay artists "enough", as if everyone wasn't pirating
| music en masse in the days before streaming. Give me a break.
| And I'm not even throwing stones. I remember filling my MP3
| player with pirated music 20 years ago.
|
| If you're pirating content, you're stealing it. I'd 100% prefer
| that people just own up to it than try to contrive these
| elaborate arguments about how the social contract has been
| completely rearranged and why ackshually they are not only
| justified but practically obligated to do it. Beyond
| ridiculous. Get over yourselves.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Mods, merge in earlier discussion (Cory's stupid permalink
| scheme),
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578872
| devmor wrote:
| If companies truly want to solve the piracy problem, they will
| treat consumers better. That is the only way to hit minimum
| piracy.
|
| Anecdotally I would observe that few people pirate games, movies,
| books, etc released by publishers with a record for respecting
| their consumer based - compared to piracy of media released by
| publishers that do things like revoking access to media you've
| paid for.
| tzs wrote:
| > Anecdotally I would observe that few people pirate games,
| movies, books, etc released by publishers with a record for
| respecting their consumer based - compared to piracy of media
| released by publishers that do things like revoking access to
| media you've paid for
|
| Anecdotally I've seen a lot of comments over the years from
| book authors whose books are sold completely DRM-free, as
| physical books and/or DRM-free PDFs, say that they are widely
| pirated.
|
| There are a lot of people who will _always_ find an excuse to
| pirate. Even if the ebook is inexpensive, DRM-free, in a
| completely open format everything can read, and the license
| allows everything that you can do with a physical book bought
| from a bookstore including lending it to others as long as only
| one person at a time has access, people will find some excuse
| for why they must pirate it, like "I wanted to buy 3 books
| that week, from 3 publishers, and it is too much hassle to have
| to enter my credit card number on 3 different web sites".
| gmuslera wrote:
| It starts at the first word. It's not buying anymore, for most
| things. It is getting a permission for a restricted use of it,
| not even renting. And still, they charge you as you were buying.
| The original company is still the owner, and can do and undo
| whatever it wants.
|
| Imagine "buying" a house, but the real owner can kick you out,
| put someone living with you in some of your rooms, install their
| security cameras, forbid you to put some furniture or have a
| saying on who can invite you there.
|
| Also, piracy is as stealing as taking a photo of your car is
| stealing it. You still have your car, someone that wouldn't buy
| it anyway won't pay for that neither. And probably the person
| pirating it will have more rights over the thing they didn't pay
| than a lawful buyer would have over the item he fully paid and
| "bought".
| oleg_antonyan wrote:
| Actually, this is a good explanation why I don't use streaming
| services and download music intead, which is 90% torrents and 10%
| bandcamp that costs overall higher than streaming subscription
| would be
| class3shock wrote:
| Can I ask how you discover new music? Or if you have any non-
| subscription sources for radio-like services not swamped with
| adds? I have largely moved away from subscriptions but still
| use spotify for those two reasons.
| petee wrote:
| > _Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more
| money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax
| writeoff_
|
| To be fair, he wasn't the one who figured it out, *many*
| production companies were/are doing this. You only hear about
| some because the actors spoke up, but most won't risk violating
| their NDA
| lapcat wrote:
| This why big companies want to move everything to
| "subscriptions", i.e., rental, in order to eliminate the concept
| of ownership.
| Sakos wrote:
| One of the reasons why I'm glad Stadia died. That's a future I
| didn't want to see realized.
| veidr wrote:
| He was right; it has now played out and this is a legitimate
| accounting of it.
|
| It goes beyond the headline, though. We should rejoice that we
| have a writer that can make such boring-ass societal degradation
| interesting.
|
| I never "bought" any TV shows on my Playstation (or any Pantone
| colors on my Adobe) because I knew this would happen, but... the
| key sentence fragment of the article:
|
| _this is the foreseeable, inevitable result_
| atomjames wrote:
| Let's elect more people like Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez to work
| on this stuff.
| smashah wrote:
| "remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades"
|
| Revoking or paywalling API access falls under this definition of
| enshittification.
|
| The enlightenment* brought about human rights.
|
| We are well within the digital age without any meaningful Digital
| Rights.
|
| Adversarial interop should be one such digital right.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Piracy isn't copying things for free. If it was, it wouldn't have
| been a crime on the high seas, nobody would've died, and we'd be
| in a utopia. (The kind we have in cyberspace and we're trying to
| enforce the tyrannical limits of meatspace onto for $, which can
| be used to buy stuff in meatspace, which you still can't copy for
| free.)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So easy to pile on this post.
|
| I remember decades ago watching closely the new crop of
| televisions released each year -- getting nerdy about the specs,
| features (back when TV's were dumb, expensive, and the new annual
| crop always exciting, shiny). I began to notice that a company
| like Sony would produce a suite of TV's that were the same in
| more ways than not -- but there seemed to be features that were
| simply neutered on the lower price-tier devices.
|
| I could imagine some marketing hack coming to the engineers and
| telling them which features to gimp on the base model, which ones
| to exclude on the next tier....
|
| I must be both naive and old-fashioned to think that companies
| would compete by trying to both keep their prices lower than
| their competitor and their features superior. Sony (and of course
| others) decided to compete with themselves instead.
|
| Then when I started amassing a huge DVD collection a couple
| decades ago, it became increasingly annoying that I would have to
| sit through ads on the DVDs before I could watch the film I had
| paid for.
|
| Trailers, coming-attractions, also-available-from-time-warner are
| ads.
|
| I finally started to rip my own DVDs and have done so ever since.
| dleslie wrote:
| The forced ads on DVDs remains an important inflection point in
| the rise of digital media, I think. Early on one of the most
| common points in favour mentioned by those advocating for
| digital-only media was that you simply weren't required to sit
| through advertisements.
|
| I personally installed VLC for a number of folks simply because
| it allowed them to watch DVDs without advertisements. It was a
| meaningful draw.
|
| Then Netflix came and offered a low-barrier service with a
| decent catalog and, importantly, no advertisements. I'm of the
| impression that the broadcasters and studios have hated that
| aspect of it the most, and are hell bent to return to forced
| advertisement views.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think I read someone else say that, if libraries weren't a
| thing already, the publishers would have never allowed them.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| ads are money, and very few businesses can avoid the allure
| of them.
|
| It also comes down to the side of the consumer. Almost every-
| time people would pick free+ads over paid+no_ads. now,
| lower_pay+ads over higher_pay_to_remove_ads is a much more
| dubious premise, but the moder pricing tiers suggest that
| some do go for it.
| overtomanu wrote:
| It might be decoy pricing strategy..
| parentheses wrote:
| I couldn't read this rant all the way through. It was simply too
| much spewing hatred.
|
| DRM serves many purposes. It's just as much tamper detection as
| it is intentional control.
|
| While I want protections for promises implicitly made by
| products, they are implicit promises.
|
| In the end, it's a give and take.
|
| We as users get a lot for our money. I'm rarely disappointed by
| most consumer products - and they tend to be surprisingly feature
| rich. I look around my house and do not see DRM tragedies but
| products I like and have enjoyed owning so far.
|
| This article is a clickbait rant and I'm honestly sick of it.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Google lets you "buy" movies online. The movie is attached to the
| email account. You cannot transfer it to a different email
| account.
|
| The very same google that offers Gmail but is also known to block
| accounts for perceived violation of contract and which will now
| close Gmail accounts that aren't used for a number of months.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that
| modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd
| paid for..
|
| I figured out a Workaround for this. I install the crapware
| Driver-o-Software they want me to. Then I run "Double Driver 4.10
| Portable" (not affiliated), I take a backup of the driver(s).
| Then I uninstall (or roll-back). Then the driver is still missing
| but I user my Double Driver folder backup (I keep in external
| disk), and booya! the device works without the crapware. It adds
| a couple more hoops in the experience, but it has worked like a
| charm.
|
| (I remember Steve Gibson mentioned DoubleDriver some years back
| on the SecurityNow podcast - I tried it, and I never looked back)
| tgma wrote:
| Piracy isn't stealing -- full stop. No ifs and buts.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Piracy, in the sense used about IP, was never stealing, it has
| always been trespassing. Stealing is when you deprive someone of
| property without consent, trespass is when you use property
| without consent without depriving the owner of it.
|
| This remains true irrespective of what kind and term if rights
| you get when you purchase an IP license.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| This is all about convenience. Consider streaming. You have
| everything available instantly without any effort... until your
| network connection goes down. Then you have nothing.
|
| Most young people cannot imagine living in a world disconnected.
| It's great until it isn't, and at that point it's hopeless
| without any recourse. It might as well be a death apocalypse.
|
| I do know what it's like to live in a world disconnected. Because
| of that I keep my media on a portable storage device and back it
| up on redundant devices so that it does not get lost. I pay no
| subscriptions to access my media. It's always instantly available
| when I travel anywhere. There are no advertisements, outages,
| bills, pauses, or other disruptions. Because of stuff like
| Bluetooth, Samba, and Plex it's available to all my household
| media devices automatically.
|
| My son loves his streaming service, but that just looks like
| paying a premium for laziness with a high potential for failure.
| vcg3rd wrote:
| Paying does not equal buying. If I lease a car, you can still
| steal it. If I rent a car, you can steal it.
|
| If I subscribe to a daily newspaper, you can steal it off my
| driveway in which case you steal from me and not the publisher
| because I never owned the content. If you sell my newspaper then
| you've stolen from the publisher even though I paid the publisher
| for that printed copy.
|
| It's really not that hard. Original pirates could steal from
| dozens of merchants, share holders, and sailors in various ways
| and degrees, monies paid to monies earned, to monies owed, to
| monies potentially gained, by seizing the cargo of one vessel.
| CSSer wrote:
| Let's use your example. How would you feel if, due to a
| disagreement with the publisher over the quality of ink, the
| publisher was "forced" to break into your house while you eat
| breakfast and rip the newspaper out of your hands? This is what
| happens today. They've colluded to redefine the verb "buy" due
| to "licensing", and it's sick.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| it would suck and it would make headlines. But that's not
| what happens today, so it's a nil argument. the GP's argument
| comparing it to rentals/leases makes sense since you aren't
| truly owning a purchase (and if you are that deadset on
| stealing a car they probably will literally break into your
| house). you're buying a license and licenses can be revoked.
|
| Now, if that should be allowed without an explicit mention on
| the purchase page is certainly something to argue in court.
| hereme888 wrote:
| One of the most astounding things I've learned is how
| movies/shows/cartoons get quietly changed, and you no longer have
| the original art.
|
| Wokeness, marketing, etc...decisions are made to change content,
| and the "owner" gets their product changed without consent or
| remedy.
| EchoReflection wrote:
| even though (I think) I 100% agree with that article, I'm not
| sure it is sound. one can buy the right/rights to something "for
| X amount of time" or on "Y amount of devices" (what is known as a
| "lease", sometimes), but the "legal" gobbledygook specifies that
| what one is "buying" is limited to/by certain conditions. Like
| leasing a car. I think (but am not positive) that is how Apple
| ideologically reframed the way they "license" music/media
| consumption through iTunes? And also how, following in Apple's
| footsteps, how Google started "loaning" content (movies on
| YouTube) that are available for 48 hours after the "purchase"
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > 20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris
| Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired.
|
| This was an interesting discussion 20 years ago, but none of this
| matters in five years. Creative content delivery became too cheap
| to meter with the Internet. We're entering the age of creative
| content generation becoming too cheap to meter.
| tacocataco wrote:
| For profit entities have proven multiple times they are not to be
| trusted with preserving culture.
|
| Piracy is the only way some games and TV shows are still
| available.
| parentheses wrote:
| I don't get why this salty rant got so much love on HN. It's
| vulgar and extreme to a level that I just don't care about this.
| If tomorrow, some video I had watched disappeared, I would move
| on with 0 fucks given.
|
| Also worth noting rather ironically: at least for video
| entertainment, you can usually pirate discontinued content
| easily.
|
| I'm sorry to minimize your reason for such a salty rant, OP, but
| I just don't get it. If there's more context as to why this is
| personal, that may help me empathise.
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