The author has a fundamental misunderstanding of what laws mean, and how they change.
In England, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day? Why? Because centuries ago England was governed by a despotic, fundamentalist Christian regime that did not approve of Christmas celebrations.
Should I then refrain from eating the mince pie? No. I and millions of my fellow countrymen eat mince pies, and most are completely unaware of the existence of Cromwell's mean spirited law.
Why is this crime tolerated by the authorities? Because they do not go about like Robocop, enforcing laws as though they are some kind of computer program. Instead they understand that laws are a crude human attempt to model current social norms. Those social norms change over time and often the written laws don't keep up with the pace of that change.
The Internet has made copyright law outdated. Social norms are in the process of adjusting to the new situation. It's perfectly rational and normal for activists to hasten that process by defying the law, and encouraging others to do likewise. Obviously, the copyright lobby will react by trying to strengthen the laws, and step up enforcement. That's fair enough too.
Which side will win? Well opinions vary, but to suggest that breaking the law is in itself an immoral and irredeemable act, is naive.
The Internet has made copyright law outdated. Social norms are in the process of adjusting to the new situation.
Well, the Internet certainly has led to a generation of young people who are accustomed to downloading freely from various sources without regard to copyright restrictions and, in this sense, I would concur that social norms are changing.
Unfortunately, the law itself is far from changing and, while some of this has to do with corporate lobbyists, the greatest reason is that copyright is a key part of many forms of commercial activity whose nature is not changed by the Internet and whose deep-seated roots require the continuation of copyright.
Just as one example, Steve Jobs had funded Pixar when it was a fledgling company primarily trying to design a hardware solution while also supporting a team of animators who were doing primarily experimental things. In time, it became clear that the hardware piece was not going to be promising but that the animation team might just produce a breakthrough in animated films. The problem: it took someone with tons of money and a huge appetite for risk to carry this through. A whole team of creative people and their families suffered through that one and did not come out whole even as it was - but they stuck it out, as did Mr. Jobs, who invested countless millions in the venture at a time when that strained his personal resources. The outcome: Toy Story (and the whole Pixar legacy). The outcome without copyright: a big goose egg. Why? Because the participants in this venture underwent great hardship to get to the final result and the only hope of a financial payoff lay in being able to have a film that would be owned, controlled, and marketed by the Pixar venture and that might become a large commercial success. This is indeed what happened but only because of the protections afforded by copyright.
Now take the whole universe of startups as a larger example, where founders are today offering massive incentives to highly skilled developers in order to develop key functionality based on proprietary code whose value lies precisely in the fact that it is protected by copyright. If all this were simply public domain, then funding for these ventures would vanish or the business models radically restructured. Unless and until someone comes up with a model by which public domain code can be used to gain competitive advantage in the standard startup of this type, copyright will continue to play a huge and important role.
Such examples could be replicated many times over. My point, though, is that, insofar as the law is concerned, copyright law is hardly "outdated" and the reasons for its existence and its commercial value have not gone away. That body of existing law does indeed protect the interests of mega-corporations who are using lobbying efforts to gain special privileges at the expense of us all, and this is despicable. But it also protects countless other people who create things - writers, musicians, film makers, software developers, etc. - whose livelihood in the economy as currently structured depends on it. Unless and until the needs of such creative people to control their works change, copyright law will persist as before (I did a lengthy post on the reasons for this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3479959).
I am not saying that it is justified to mount a moral crusade against acts of infringement. But to suggest that a radical change in the law of copyright is imminent - or that it is about to be abolished - is, in my view, to misread the legal landscape in a serious way.
Those who say "Only those with something to hide will have something to fear" are those that fail to recognize we're all criminals. We've all broken some sort of law at some point in time, and most break dozens of laws every day in the course of their life.
There are so many things that are technically illegal. There are too many laws that aren't up to date with what people expect to be able to reasonably do.
Sir, what make you think our situation is historically unique? If you read the history of copyright, you would realize that our is not so special. Rather, the current situation is a continuation of debates that started centuries ago.
I don't really understand these posts that simply declare that the correct choice is not to use their stuff, that piracy is wrong, and it's not your choice.
I happen to agree with the overall conclusion that one should seek alternatives in these cases, but this is just an argument by shouting. It's foolish to simply declare, "it's not your choice". Clearly, people think it is their choice. If you want to convince them, you had better back it up with reasoning. The right to control is simply not an obvious, mostly-universally-held right like the right not to be murdered or the right to physical property.
The copyright debate is getting awfully stale. I wish the participants would come up with something new to say instead of just constantly declaring that piracy is not allowed on one side and that piracy doesn't hurt anybody on the other side.
On the anti-piracy side there are two groups: The first are artists who believe, without any evidence, that they can make more money when copyright is enforced.
The second are people start out assuming that the right to control information is a moral right. They then derive the ethical implication that people shouldn't pirate.
On the pro-file sharing side there are two groups. The first are libertarian-inclined utilitarians, which require people to prove actual harm before something should be outlawed or have tried to start a tech company and been threatened with a patent lawsuit. Every piece of evidence not created by the middle-man industry I've ever seen has supported their position.
The second are people who oppose the idea of "intellectual property", starting from moral principles such as freedom of expression, utility maximization or historic precedent.
There is no need to come up with anything new to say: the conclusion one comes to depends on what principles one uses to derive ethical implications. Intellectual property is morally wrong, declares one side. Intellectual property is a moral imperative, declares the other. It is impossible for either to convince the other, since neither is basing their arguments on a rational basis where facts or evidence might play a role.
Anyone who might be convinced doesn't care, probably because they are just ignoring stupid laws anyway.
I think that's only part of the argument. The other part is that, regardless of what's right or wrong, the OP thinks that using the software/service perpetuates it, and choosing not to pay for it isn't enough.
I agree. This article is a perfect example of argumentum ad nauseam[1]: if you repeat something enough, it must be true! Since this is a logical fallacy, this argument is not wrong--it's invalid.
"Clearly, people think it is their choice."
And that is where the author disagrees. People think it is their choice to either pay or not pay and get for free without consequences. That is wrong. If you choose to download without paying, you can't take the moral high ground because what you did is wrong.
I agree. It seems folks have dug in and staked out their positions, much as they have with abortion, and are now just screaming at each other from across the chasm. Awfully stale indeed.
This article is interesting to read and think about from a theoretical perspective. Practically, though, it is completely and utterly useless.
Fact 1: Pirating is possible and fairly easy across the board.
Fact 2: Some content creators try to limit access to maintain "exclusivity" or to keep margins high. These guys get destroyed by piracy.
Fact 3: Other services strive to make it as easy as possible to get their products legally - Steam, iTunes, the Louis CK experiment. Their stuff is pirated a lot less and they generate a bunch of goodwill on the side.
These are facts, and no appeal to morality is going to change that. You can't just tell someone to suck it up and say it's not their "decision". Of course it's their decision - everyone decides whether or not to pirate! It is ABSOLUTELY their decision. The way to curb piracy is not to appeal to people's morality and tell people they SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do something. It's never going to work.
Curb piracy by making it easier, safer, and more reliable to purchase legally rather than pirate. Articles like this do nothing but reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority.
As creators, we can curb piracy by making it easier, safer and more reliable to purchase legally. As users, shouldn't we curb piracy by not pirating things?
Sometimes the HN, Reddit and other crowds forget they're not the only ones on the planet and in fact seem to make up a tiny minority—the enlightened ones. Sure, you/we may be willing to pay for an easy-to-use service though for now, because we're tech-savvy, we'll use a conglomerate of services and have it work on all our devices, etc while the mere mortal, common man struggles to avoid downloading smiley packages.
Why do the common people pirate? Because they want something without having to pay for it which is done primarily out of selfishness, laziness and wanting to pretend our actions have no consequences. On my Facebook feed, in conversations, etc they'll speak of BitTorrent or whatever and smile with an evil glint in their eyes and think they're awesome because they're getting all this content without paying for it.
The other funny thing is, you and others speak of needing to make it easier but for the common people pirating is so usually much harder—they have to keep their computers safe from malicious people and files, they need to figure out how Kazaa and BitTorrent works, they need to have the right codecs for Windows Media Player or Quicktime to play whatever the latest favourite container is, know which crack for Windows is reliable, etc. I know someone who proclaimed to be able to download torrents and she spoke of it as some great achievement and the people around her clamoured for her to download TV show x and music y.
Going down and hiring out a movie is easier for them, the majority. Going to a cinema is easier. Buying software which comes with a license is easier. Buying a CD is easier than them trying to download the whole album (Why is it do you think these people usually never download a full album and instead end up with a poor copy of popular song x and all these unnamed .mp3s?). There is the majority. Sure, the amount of people who use Steam and that is certainly relatively large but in comparison is still small.
It's nothing new to man to want something without having to earn it. Why else are 'get rich quick' or 'get amazing abs now' successful, or rather, even exist?
The post may reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority (And maybe he does have a superior sense of morals) but many of the counter-posts are simply doing the same thing for themselves.
I solved this problem the "hard" way a long time ago. I don't use windows, at all, but GNU/Linux (Yeah, I'm this sort of guy, too).
And you know what, as time goes by it's actually less and less of an actual problem; heck, I was even able to buy games for my box this year, thank you Humble Bundle! OK, this isn't free software, but at least you don't feel like you've been anally raped with barbed wire.
And music? Well, I still buy CDs, mostly; the time when CDs came with DRM apparently faded away, so I don't even need to screen for this anymore (yes, I've actively boycotted some artists because of this for a while). From time to time, for music I don't actually care about, I buy mp3s from Amazon.
I don't write this to emphasize my moral superiority but to emphasize that it isn't that hard. You don't agree with their policy? don't buy the frigging stuff.
I agree with you but I'm voting down. There's no need to use violent rape analogies when talking about someone requiring you to activate over the phone. Turn it down a notch please.
The only problem I have with this article is this line:
"since when does that suddenly mean that you can decide that you are no longer going to pay for products that both legally and morally you are obliged to pay for, yet still use them?"
Legally obliged to pay for? Yes.
Morally? No. I have no moral problem with piracy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Those are the foundations of my morality. I would love it if people pirated things I made. That's my morality.
On morality: given how widespread the piracy is, we probably shouldn't assert that the moral side of the things is obvious here.
Regarding the law, that's one way to look at that. Another way is that the role of copyright is about to change, and disobeying the law en masse might be one way to help that change.
(Disclaimer: I'm not much of a pirate myself, I have a US iTunes Store account despite living in Russia just to be able to buy music legally. Also I'm earning money by writing software. But being able to copyright music and software is not a given, it's just how things work today, and as the world changes, this concept will also evolve.)
I don't understand pirates that think downloading the content is a form of protest.
If you want to make a change and win then you have to think like your opponent. This is how the greedy suits think:
"Our product has sold X copies, but Y people downloaded it. That means there are X+Y people interested in my product! We must make it so X+Y people buy it and 0 download it!"
NO! Stop! Bad pirates! By downloading the product you're telling the company you want their offerings but are too lazy or greedy or whatever. Vote with your wallet and avoid the product! That way when the suit looks at his charts he can figure out why no one wanted the product in the first place. If his inbox is chock full of "drop the DRM" then maybe he'll consider it.
You are not making a stance by stealing it. You're reaffirming their decision to put on DRM and pass anti-piracy laws. You're giving them the excuse to invade your rights/privacy. Stop it.
Ok. I hope I'm not going against the rules of HN discourse here but I'd like to go out on a limb and say any article in which the author doesn't bother capitalizing the first word in his sentences is not an article I'm going to bother to read. One of the few things I miss about the world before the internet is a proper adherence to grammar. If he were ESL, I would be more forgiving, but this post just smacks of lazy writing.
I think that many people seem to believe that property is some intrinsic thing. But, in fact, property is a socially construed thing and a granted privilege. Furthermore, property means many things, and there are many different kinds. Each kind should be treated differently.
Most of the confusion of 'piracy' (such a strong word, btw) stems from people misusing concepts related to physical objects and translating them equally to ephemeral things like 'intellectual-property' and 'digital-property'. The later things should be treated differently (in this person's opinion).
'Stealing' is a bad word. It's an age-old word that causes physical reaction in many. We learn very early on not to 'steal'. But, downloading a digitally compressed song is not the same thing as taking a toy from another kid.
At some point, power has shifted from owning physical objects to these new sorts of things that aren't physical. We need new laws and new social norms. We need fair reasonable treatment, for these things.
Sadly, the power-holders are writing the laws that grant themselves the most privileges. Instead, the society should write the laws that beget the best society.
Not that I disagree with a word of this article, but he's accepting the premise of those two articles: that the distribution mechanisms are a worse UX than pirating. My response:
Are you high? Once upon a time I pirated content, he's an approximate recap of what my expierience looked like:
* Search pirate bay
* Look at 2000 results, none of which look right.
* Ok, found one.
* Crap it's French with Arabic subtitles.
* Ok this one looks good.
* Shit, no seeders.
* Ok, this one has seeders and is english.
* Go get a bagel because it's going to take an hour to download.
Here's the UX of Netflix, rdio, or hulu:
* Search.
* Press play.
In my time using Netflix, rdio, hulu, and last.fm for my media needs there has been one title I couldn't find.
EDIT: I'll be clear, my comments on these services apply exclusively to the US, I know nothing about the status of these services elsewhere.
Agreed that the UX of existing sites have much better UX than the pirating options. However a much more common experience on Netflix is:
* Search
* Whoops, this movie isn't available on streaming.
On Hulu:
* Search
* Only the last four episodes are available.
The content distributors are strangling themselves because they're trying to protect their existing means of distribution and refuse to adopt new ones that people actually want to use and pay for.
I don't know what you're talking about, I do most of my searches on Pirate Bay only once, then sort descending by seeds (which not only indicates which is fastest to download, but also which is the most popular) ... then the download is over in 5 minutes.
Well, that's fine for people in the US. But for everyone else (i.e., the vast majority) for whom Hulu, netflix, etc are not available, the legal onlines alternatives are for the most part crap or missing the content you want.
Then again Netflix isn't available in Europe and there are huge holes in the catalogue of any streaming service. With that said I think Netflix will be huge in Europe or at least in my native Sweden. As for your pirate bay experience here is how it goes today:
1. Search for content.
2. Sort by seeders.
3. Click magnet link.
4. Start streaming from uTorrent.
Pirate Bay isn't the only way to find torrents. Private networks (such as what.cd for music) are hilariously easy to use, and generally much quicker than public torrents.
Refusing to move to the back of the bus.
Sitting down in the middle of the street to block the movement of troops from point a to point b.
Walking from Montgomery to Selma.
Downloading the Inbetweeners.
One of these things is not civil disobedience. In fact, trying to cast piracy as a form of civil disobedience is insulting to the people who actually got arrested, beaten by police, attacked by dogs, had the firehose turned on them, were tear-gassed, run over, and suffered any number of real consequences as they publicly defied laws and a society that were unquestionably wrong.
To cast content piracy as civil disobedience, one must accept that the act of murder is an act of civil disobedience because the murderer believes the law against it is unjust.
My thoughts exactly. You can't force a privately-owned company to sell you the product the way you want it to be sold. It's their right to make money the way they see fit, and if they decide it's okay for them to lose some of the clientele over DRM, it's their choice.
Piracy in the name of protesting against DRM is borderline hypocrisy. As others already said, morality is subjective, but here are two other ways I'd personally support :
- don't use the product,
- pay for the license, pirate the product, get it touch with the company to explain your problem to them.
I agree on software : alternative exists and the real way to say "fuck off" is to use the corresponding free software alternative or to develop it. This is true to the extent where Microsoft plays the rules of competition and IT correctly. If a government or a provider gives me a document in a format that Microsoft does not publish, they are effectively trying to make competition impossible and I feel entitled to pirate their software.
On music, I could not disagree more : there is a lack of a solution to pay artists directly. 90% of the artists I know today, I know from friends or web radio. I would like to repay them directly. I have no way of doing that. The alternative is just not there. Some artists accept direct donations but majors try to prevent that. This anti-competitive behavior makes it totally OK in my opinion to pirate music.
Oh, and don't tell me I am rationalising. I stopped being part of this game several years ago. I don't buy music, I don't download tunes (unless it is authorised by the band like Partition 36). I decided this whole show was stupid when I got my first DRMed CD and that I didn't want to fight on it or break any law. Nowadays the situation is such that this conflict can't be ignored anymore. "Piracy" is used as a pretext to put forward net filtering, restrictive laws, and tools of censorship.
I don't give a fuck about music and musicians. I can do without. I respect them and they deserve a pay, but the current system is completely FUBAR and its insanity is creeping in other domains. It should be stopped before it is too late.
If copyright were just to protect the investment of a company in development of an artist or product I'd broadly agree with this argument.
Where copyright seems objectionable to me, is where the initial cost of development was non-existent or large profits have been made for years. For example:
For some copyright to last 95 years seems more like profiteering than protection of the creative industries considering creation is often based on the work of others.
I don't condone piracy, but I think piracy would be far less socially acceptable if:
- the creator can be seen to benefit from their work
- copyright better resembled its original intent of protecting investment in the creation of something new and not staking ownership over the work of others.
The law is nothing but a piece of paper. I'm glad it exists, as it provides a framework that protects me from harm and allows me to life my live, but I feel no moral obligation at all to follow it.
This style of argumentation is starting to tire me. Obviously, this author thinks piracy is morally wrong. Other people have no such moral qualms about piracy. Both points of view are fine!
But implicitly or explicitly using morality as an argument for or against piracy is a bad style of argumentation and is almost an ad hominem. If I were to say that I am for piracy and someone told me that this was morally wrong, I would pay no attention to this person. But if he were to say that he personally feels piracy is morally wrong AND if he were to give me an argument as to why he feels that way, I would listen to this argument and at least think about it.
Except moral relativism is not any more defensible. Suppose the creator of a work asks you to pay for it, but a pirate chooses not to. Why shouldn't we call the pirate an asshole? They've disrespected the terms of use set by the author, as well as the author themselves.
Fact: People will pirate your software if you make it a pain to pay for it.
Fact: People will pay for your software if you make it easy to pay for.
Windows has proven this with their DRM.
Apple has proven this with their app stores and itunes.
In a slightly unrelated note:
This is why I wish there was an app store for web apps. The web needs easy way to sell access to web apps like in the app store. If all I had to do was click 'purchase' and enter my password to get access to web apps like turntable.fm for a reasonable price, I would gladly pay. This would open up a whole new revenue model for web apps. There is a whole class of web apps that are trying to rely on ads now but don't have the millions of visitors a month to make that feasible. A web app store could provide a place for these lower traffic but still very useful and relevant products. I envy mobile developers since they have this avenue as an option. Anyone else feel this way?
Someone mentioned 3D printers in another post and got downvoted for it. But think about it.
You invested a lot of time into creating an object everybody likes. People can get it in a online shop and it will be send to there address.
Now a clever guy scans the object with a 3D scanner and is putting the model online. Everybody can now downloading the model on The Pirate Bay and print it at home.
And they all say: "fuck that online store, it is way too much hassle and costs too much".
It's a difficult discussion. Therefore I think it's way to easy to just call making a copy not stealing.
One can say that record labels brought the piracy problem on themselves by looking to create barriers to content while pirates worked to create access to content.
However, it's erroneous for an individual to argue that he has a right to pirate because the industry created barriers to their own content. It's counterproductive to the anti-censorship movement.
Instead, we should focus on the fact that the music industry has been anti-effective and is now using censorship to compensate for their reluctance to change.
You're right, and it's just as erroneous for an individual to argue that he has a right to payment every time someone shares a new copy of his creation.
Competing interests will often be in conflict, and that's what we're seeing in this debate. You can safely translate "a right to piracy" to "no moral obligation to respect copyright". Once the moral argument is dismissed, all that remains is pragmatic conflict resolution.
One side could be destroyed, a compromise could be found, or a protracted conflict could ensue. In any case, moral arguments from either side are mostly useless.
"if you want to protest the crappy way these companies treat their customers, don't buy their stuff. but you can't have your cake and eat it. protest by not using or having it at all. they have something you want; even if you don't agree with their methods, it is still theirs to decide what to do with. all you are doing is supporting the industry in their drive to stamp out pirates; instead, support legal ways of obtaining this content through spotify and others. "
The one fault I see with this argument (mainly related to music) is this: There is no way to simply boycott the the recording companies' products without boycotting the artists as well. Recording companies have a monopoly on the artists they cover. While US contract law supports this arrangement, the model is broken in today's world of digital distribution.
Recording companies have a monopoly on the artists they cover.
And that's the artist's choice. The artist could choose to distribute their work in some other fashion. So, if you want the artist's product, you have to buy it via the means chosen by that artist.
The next best thing may be to only buy used CDs. Then you legally get the music AND annoy them at the same time.
Of course, you COULD actually boycott the artists. There are tons of independent musicians on the internet you can support. If you think that only the big label ones are worth your time and money, then clearly your opinions on the big labels themselves are unfounded.
(Just to be clear, all of the above "you"s refer not to the parent, but to everyone in general)
Author Paolo Coelho operated a blog called Pirate Coelho where he published torrents to all his books. He still does this because it makes him rich. For example, in Russia nobody bought his books, sales were up to 15 000 books in two years. So he leaked the russian translations via BitTorrent. Soon, he saw that people started talking about them. Some time later, he saw the sales increasing. A lot. In one year sales of his physical books crossed 1 million in Russia. Source is himself.
Now, his publishers have finally realized the connection, so he doesn't need the anonymous pirate blog anymore. Instead, he links to the torrents from his own offical blog. He is also an avid SOPA protester: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/
That is his right to do so. It is also the right of other authors to be against free bittorrenting of their books because they believe it hurts their pocketbook. The key is the creator of the material makes this decision, not the consumer.
[+] [-] alextingle|14 years ago|reply
In England, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day? Why? Because centuries ago England was governed by a despotic, fundamentalist Christian regime that did not approve of Christmas celebrations.
Should I then refrain from eating the mince pie? No. I and millions of my fellow countrymen eat mince pies, and most are completely unaware of the existence of Cromwell's mean spirited law.
Why is this crime tolerated by the authorities? Because they do not go about like Robocop, enforcing laws as though they are some kind of computer program. Instead they understand that laws are a crude human attempt to model current social norms. Those social norms change over time and often the written laws don't keep up with the pace of that change.
The Internet has made copyright law outdated. Social norms are in the process of adjusting to the new situation. It's perfectly rational and normal for activists to hasten that process by defying the law, and encouraging others to do likewise. Obviously, the copyright lobby will react by trying to strengthen the laws, and step up enforcement. That's fair enough too.
Which side will win? Well opinions vary, but to suggest that breaking the law is in itself an immoral and irredeemable act, is naive.
[+] [-] grellas|14 years ago|reply
Well, the Internet certainly has led to a generation of young people who are accustomed to downloading freely from various sources without regard to copyright restrictions and, in this sense, I would concur that social norms are changing.
Unfortunately, the law itself is far from changing and, while some of this has to do with corporate lobbyists, the greatest reason is that copyright is a key part of many forms of commercial activity whose nature is not changed by the Internet and whose deep-seated roots require the continuation of copyright.
Just as one example, Steve Jobs had funded Pixar when it was a fledgling company primarily trying to design a hardware solution while also supporting a team of animators who were doing primarily experimental things. In time, it became clear that the hardware piece was not going to be promising but that the animation team might just produce a breakthrough in animated films. The problem: it took someone with tons of money and a huge appetite for risk to carry this through. A whole team of creative people and their families suffered through that one and did not come out whole even as it was - but they stuck it out, as did Mr. Jobs, who invested countless millions in the venture at a time when that strained his personal resources. The outcome: Toy Story (and the whole Pixar legacy). The outcome without copyright: a big goose egg. Why? Because the participants in this venture underwent great hardship to get to the final result and the only hope of a financial payoff lay in being able to have a film that would be owned, controlled, and marketed by the Pixar venture and that might become a large commercial success. This is indeed what happened but only because of the protections afforded by copyright.
Now take the whole universe of startups as a larger example, where founders are today offering massive incentives to highly skilled developers in order to develop key functionality based on proprietary code whose value lies precisely in the fact that it is protected by copyright. If all this were simply public domain, then funding for these ventures would vanish or the business models radically restructured. Unless and until someone comes up with a model by which public domain code can be used to gain competitive advantage in the standard startup of this type, copyright will continue to play a huge and important role.
Such examples could be replicated many times over. My point, though, is that, insofar as the law is concerned, copyright law is hardly "outdated" and the reasons for its existence and its commercial value have not gone away. That body of existing law does indeed protect the interests of mega-corporations who are using lobbying efforts to gain special privileges at the expense of us all, and this is despicable. But it also protects countless other people who create things - writers, musicians, film makers, software developers, etc. - whose livelihood in the economy as currently structured depends on it. Unless and until the needs of such creative people to control their works change, copyright law will persist as before (I did a lengthy post on the reasons for this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3479959).
I am not saying that it is justified to mount a moral crusade against acts of infringement. But to suggest that a radical change in the law of copyright is imminent - or that it is about to be abolished - is, in my view, to misread the legal landscape in a serious way.
[+] [-] VMG|14 years ago|reply
What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem
[+] [-] astrodust|14 years ago|reply
There are so many things that are technically illegal. There are too many laws that aren't up to date with what people expect to be able to reasonably do.
[+] [-] kiba|14 years ago|reply
Sir, what make you think our situation is historically unique? If you read the history of copyright, you would realize that our is not so special. Rather, the current situation is a continuation of debates that started centuries ago.
[+] [-] davidw|14 years ago|reply
I don't buy it. If they're doing so publicly as a challenge... maybe, but that doesn't seem like the case for many people who are doing it.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mikeash|14 years ago|reply
I happen to agree with the overall conclusion that one should seek alternatives in these cases, but this is just an argument by shouting. It's foolish to simply declare, "it's not your choice". Clearly, people think it is their choice. If you want to convince them, you had better back it up with reasoning. The right to control is simply not an obvious, mostly-universally-held right like the right not to be murdered or the right to physical property.
The copyright debate is getting awfully stale. I wish the participants would come up with something new to say instead of just constantly declaring that piracy is not allowed on one side and that piracy doesn't hurt anybody on the other side.
[+] [-] roguecoder|14 years ago|reply
On the anti-piracy side there are two groups: The first are artists who believe, without any evidence, that they can make more money when copyright is enforced. The second are people start out assuming that the right to control information is a moral right. They then derive the ethical implication that people shouldn't pirate.
On the pro-file sharing side there are two groups. The first are libertarian-inclined utilitarians, which require people to prove actual harm before something should be outlawed or have tried to start a tech company and been threatened with a patent lawsuit. Every piece of evidence not created by the middle-man industry I've ever seen has supported their position. The second are people who oppose the idea of "intellectual property", starting from moral principles such as freedom of expression, utility maximization or historic precedent.
There is no need to come up with anything new to say: the conclusion one comes to depends on what principles one uses to derive ethical implications. Intellectual property is morally wrong, declares one side. Intellectual property is a moral imperative, declares the other. It is impossible for either to convince the other, since neither is basing their arguments on a rational basis where facts or evidence might play a role.
Anyone who might be convinced doesn't care, probably because they are just ignoring stupid laws anyway.
[+] [-] jmilloy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tikhonj|14 years ago|reply
[1]: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/argumentum_ad_nauseam
[+] [-] pilom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] funkah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yangez|14 years ago|reply
Fact 1: Pirating is possible and fairly easy across the board.
Fact 2: Some content creators try to limit access to maintain "exclusivity" or to keep margins high. These guys get destroyed by piracy.
Fact 3: Other services strive to make it as easy as possible to get their products legally - Steam, iTunes, the Louis CK experiment. Their stuff is pirated a lot less and they generate a bunch of goodwill on the side.
These are facts, and no appeal to morality is going to change that. You can't just tell someone to suck it up and say it's not their "decision". Of course it's their decision - everyone decides whether or not to pirate! It is ABSOLUTELY their decision. The way to curb piracy is not to appeal to people's morality and tell people they SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do something. It's never going to work.
Curb piracy by making it easier, safer, and more reliable to purchase legally rather than pirate. Articles like this do nothing but reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority.
[+] [-] Skroob|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaz|14 years ago|reply
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-bein...
[+] [-] dorian-graph|14 years ago|reply
Why do the common people pirate? Because they want something without having to pay for it which is done primarily out of selfishness, laziness and wanting to pretend our actions have no consequences. On my Facebook feed, in conversations, etc they'll speak of BitTorrent or whatever and smile with an evil glint in their eyes and think they're awesome because they're getting all this content without paying for it.
The other funny thing is, you and others speak of needing to make it easier but for the common people pirating is so usually much harder—they have to keep their computers safe from malicious people and files, they need to figure out how Kazaa and BitTorrent works, they need to have the right codecs for Windows Media Player or Quicktime to play whatever the latest favourite container is, know which crack for Windows is reliable, etc. I know someone who proclaimed to be able to download torrents and she spoke of it as some great achievement and the people around her clamoured for her to download TV show x and music y.
Going down and hiring out a movie is easier for them, the majority. Going to a cinema is easier. Buying software which comes with a license is easier. Buying a CD is easier than them trying to download the whole album (Why is it do you think these people usually never download a full album and instead end up with a poor copy of popular song x and all these unnamed .mp3s?). There is the majority. Sure, the amount of people who use Steam and that is certainly relatively large but in comparison is still small.
It's nothing new to man to want something without having to earn it. Why else are 'get rich quick' or 'get amazing abs now' successful, or rather, even exist?
The post may reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority (And maybe he does have a superior sense of morals) but many of the counter-posts are simply doing the same thing for themselves.
[+] [-] wazoox|14 years ago|reply
And you know what, as time goes by it's actually less and less of an actual problem; heck, I was even able to buy games for my box this year, thank you Humble Bundle! OK, this isn't free software, but at least you don't feel like you've been anally raped with barbed wire.
And music? Well, I still buy CDs, mostly; the time when CDs came with DRM apparently faded away, so I don't even need to screen for this anymore (yes, I've actively boycotted some artists because of this for a while). From time to time, for music I don't actually care about, I buy mp3s from Amazon.
I don't write this to emphasize my moral superiority but to emphasize that it isn't that hard. You don't agree with their policy? don't buy the frigging stuff.
[+] [-] sequoia|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apreche|14 years ago|reply
"since when does that suddenly mean that you can decide that you are no longer going to pay for products that both legally and morally you are obliged to pay for, yet still use them?"
Legally obliged to pay for? Yes.
Morally? No. I have no moral problem with piracy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Those are the foundations of my morality. I would love it if people pirated things I made. That's my morality.
[+] [-] andreyvit|14 years ago|reply
Regarding the law, that's one way to look at that. Another way is that the role of copyright is about to change, and disobeying the law en masse might be one way to help that change.
(Disclaimer: I'm not much of a pirate myself, I have a US iTunes Store account despite living in Russia just to be able to buy music legally. Also I'm earning money by writing software. But being able to copyright music and software is not a given, it's just how things work today, and as the world changes, this concept will also evolve.)
[+] [-] TheCapn|14 years ago|reply
If you want to make a change and win then you have to think like your opponent. This is how the greedy suits think:
"Our product has sold X copies, but Y people downloaded it. That means there are X+Y people interested in my product! We must make it so X+Y people buy it and 0 download it!"
NO! Stop! Bad pirates! By downloading the product you're telling the company you want their offerings but are too lazy or greedy or whatever. Vote with your wallet and avoid the product! That way when the suit looks at his charts he can figure out why no one wanted the product in the first place. If his inbox is chock full of "drop the DRM" then maybe he'll consider it.
You are not making a stance by stealing it. You're reaffirming their decision to put on DRM and pass anti-piracy laws. You're giving them the excuse to invade your rights/privacy. Stop it.
[+] [-] jxcole|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ap22213|14 years ago|reply
Most of the confusion of 'piracy' (such a strong word, btw) stems from people misusing concepts related to physical objects and translating them equally to ephemeral things like 'intellectual-property' and 'digital-property'. The later things should be treated differently (in this person's opinion).
'Stealing' is a bad word. It's an age-old word that causes physical reaction in many. We learn very early on not to 'steal'. But, downloading a digitally compressed song is not the same thing as taking a toy from another kid.
At some point, power has shifted from owning physical objects to these new sorts of things that aren't physical. We need new laws and new social norms. We need fair reasonable treatment, for these things.
Sadly, the power-holders are writing the laws that grant themselves the most privileges. Instead, the society should write the laws that beget the best society.
[+] [-] kingkilr|14 years ago|reply
Are you high? Once upon a time I pirated content, he's an approximate recap of what my expierience looked like:
* Search pirate bay
* Look at 2000 results, none of which look right.
* Ok, found one.
* Crap it's French with Arabic subtitles.
* Ok this one looks good.
* Shit, no seeders.
* Ok, this one has seeders and is english.
* Go get a bagel because it's going to take an hour to download.
Here's the UX of Netflix, rdio, or hulu:
* Search.
* Press play.
In my time using Netflix, rdio, hulu, and last.fm for my media needs there has been one title I couldn't find.
EDIT: I'll be clear, my comments on these services apply exclusively to the US, I know nothing about the status of these services elsewhere.
[+] [-] mikeocool|14 years ago|reply
* Search
* Whoops, this movie isn't available on streaming.
On Hulu:
* Search
* Only the last four episodes are available.
The content distributors are strangling themselves because they're trying to protect their existing means of distribution and refuse to adopt new ones that people actually want to use and pay for.
[+] [-] bad_user|14 years ago|reply
Here's the UX of Netflix, rdio or hulu for me:
* content not available in your area
[+] [-] DaveChild|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jugglernaut|14 years ago|reply
Total time consumed maybe a minute.
[+] [-] jmduke|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diiq|14 years ago|reply
If you break a law you believe to be unjust and expect to suffer no consequences, that's silly, but not immoral.
If you break a law you believe is just, then you're kinda evil.
[+] [-] tikhonj|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Czarnian|14 years ago|reply
One of these things is not civil disobedience. In fact, trying to cast piracy as a form of civil disobedience is insulting to the people who actually got arrested, beaten by police, attacked by dogs, had the firehose turned on them, were tear-gassed, run over, and suffered any number of real consequences as they publicly defied laws and a society that were unquestionably wrong.
To cast content piracy as civil disobedience, one must accept that the act of murder is an act of civil disobedience because the murderer believes the law against it is unjust.
[+] [-] dino5050|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] stasm|14 years ago|reply
Piracy in the name of protesting against DRM is borderline hypocrisy. As others already said, morality is subjective, but here are two other ways I'd personally support :
- don't use the product,
- pay for the license, pirate the product, get it touch with the company to explain your problem to them.
[+] [-] Iv|14 years ago|reply
On music, I could not disagree more : there is a lack of a solution to pay artists directly. 90% of the artists I know today, I know from friends or web radio. I would like to repay them directly. I have no way of doing that. The alternative is just not there. Some artists accept direct donations but majors try to prevent that. This anti-competitive behavior makes it totally OK in my opinion to pirate music.
Oh, and don't tell me I am rationalising. I stopped being part of this game several years ago. I don't buy music, I don't download tunes (unless it is authorised by the band like Partition 36). I decided this whole show was stupid when I got my first DRMed CD and that I didn't want to fight on it or break any law. Nowadays the situation is such that this conflict can't be ignored anymore. "Piracy" is used as a pretext to put forward net filtering, restrictive laws, and tools of censorship.
I don't give a fuck about music and musicians. I can do without. I respect them and they deserve a pay, but the current system is completely FUBAR and its insanity is creeping in other domains. It should be stopped before it is too late.
[+] [-] acg|14 years ago|reply
Where copyright seems objectionable to me, is where the initial cost of development was non-existent or large profits have been made for years. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Royalty_a...
For some copyright to last 95 years seems more like profiteering than protection of the creative industries considering creation is often based on the work of others.
I don't condone piracy, but I think piracy would be far less socially acceptable if: - the creator can be seen to benefit from their work - copyright better resembled its original intent of protecting investment in the creation of something new and not staking ownership over the work of others.
[+] [-] jiggy2011|14 years ago|reply
Pirating last weeks blockbuster isn't.
[+] [-] kmm|14 years ago|reply
This style of argumentation is starting to tire me. Obviously, this author thinks piracy is morally wrong. Other people have no such moral qualms about piracy. Both points of view are fine!
But implicitly or explicitly using morality as an argument for or against piracy is a bad style of argumentation and is almost an ad hominem. If I were to say that I am for piracy and someone told me that this was morally wrong, I would pay no attention to this person. But if he were to say that he personally feels piracy is morally wrong AND if he were to give me an argument as to why he feels that way, I would listen to this argument and at least think about it.
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|14 years ago|reply
It's that simple.
[+] [-] joshontheweb|14 years ago|reply
Fact: People will pay for your software if you make it easy to pay for.
Windows has proven this with their DRM.
Apple has proven this with their app stores and itunes.
In a slightly unrelated note:
This is why I wish there was an app store for web apps. The web needs easy way to sell access to web apps like in the app store. If all I had to do was click 'purchase' and enter my password to get access to web apps like turntable.fm for a reasonable price, I would gladly pay. This would open up a whole new revenue model for web apps. There is a whole class of web apps that are trying to rely on ads now but don't have the millions of visitors a month to make that feasible. A web app store could provide a place for these lower traffic but still very useful and relevant products. I envy mobile developers since they have this avenue as an option. Anyone else feel this way?
[+] [-] tintin|14 years ago|reply
You invested a lot of time into creating an object everybody likes. People can get it in a online shop and it will be send to there address.
Now a clever guy scans the object with a 3D scanner and is putting the model online. Everybody can now downloading the model on The Pirate Bay and print it at home. And they all say: "fuck that online store, it is way too much hassle and costs too much".
It's a difficult discussion. Therefore I think it's way to easy to just call making a copy not stealing.
Edit: the post by randomdata: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3479581
[+] [-] insickness|14 years ago|reply
However, it's erroneous for an individual to argue that he has a right to pirate because the industry created barriers to their own content. It's counterproductive to the anti-censorship movement.
Instead, we should focus on the fact that the music industry has been anti-effective and is now using censorship to compensate for their reluctance to change.
[+] [-] tux1968|14 years ago|reply
Competing interests will often be in conflict, and that's what we're seeing in this debate. You can safely translate "a right to piracy" to "no moral obligation to respect copyright". Once the moral argument is dismissed, all that remains is pragmatic conflict resolution.
One side could be destroyed, a compromise could be found, or a protracted conflict could ensue. In any case, moral arguments from either side are mostly useless.
[+] [-] rplst8|14 years ago|reply
The one fault I see with this argument (mainly related to music) is this: There is no way to simply boycott the the recording companies' products without boycotting the artists as well. Recording companies have a monopoly on the artists they cover. While US contract law supports this arrangement, the model is broken in today's world of digital distribution.
[+] [-] michael_dorfman|14 years ago|reply
And that's the artist's choice. The artist could choose to distribute their work in some other fashion. So, if you want the artist's product, you have to buy it via the means chosen by that artist.
[+] [-] larrik|14 years ago|reply
The next best thing may be to only buy used CDs. Then you legally get the music AND annoy them at the same time.
Of course, you COULD actually boycott the artists. There are tons of independent musicians on the internet you can support. If you think that only the big label ones are worth your time and money, then clearly your opinions on the big labels themselves are unfounded.
(Just to be clear, all of the above "you"s refer not to the parent, but to everyone in general)
[+] [-] martinkallstrom|14 years ago|reply
Now, his publishers have finally realized the connection, so he doesn't need the anonymous pirate blog anymore. Instead, he links to the torrents from his own offical blog. He is also an avid SOPA protester: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/
[+] [-] res0nat0r|14 years ago|reply