OP, if this is just a whine about how unfair the world is and how special you are, then fine.
But if it's an attempt to make something happen (stop SOPA), then it's not working and is in fact counterproductive, so please just STFU. You are offsetting the good hard work of so many others trying to make the right things happen.
Make no mistake about it, we have reached the point where the best course of action is probably to simply appeal to the common people's innate sense of "fairness".
Copyright is not fair. We get that.
Pirating is not right. Most people would agree with that, too.
Multiple wrongs do not make a right; most people's reptilian brains sense that, too.
Long ago, before the Code of Hammurabi, the common code of law was often unfair. If, for example, I accidently killed your daughter, the penalty was to put my daughter to death. Such logic today is laughable and modern people would never put up with it. Except that's exactly what SOPA is, penalizing Party B for Party A's transgression. We don't do that anymore.
There are other good arguments against SOPA, but yours is not one of them. Instead of influencing those who need to be influenced, you are just fanning the flames of SOPA proponents. Hell, after reading your article, I almost understand their reasoning...they need to do something to stop your wrong to stop someone else's wrong to stop someone else's wrong, etc.
It's time to stop the cycle of doing wrong to combat other wrong, and just start doing right. It works better anyway. It would be nice to have you on board for that.
I have more to say, but unfortunately, someone in another thread did something wrong, so a moderator has turned off the rest of my comment...
"Pirating is not right. Most people would agree with that, too."
The biggest problem I see today is that there are so many people who aren't even bothering to justify pirating, and instead insist that it is natural, good and just -- not just as a means to get access to content they otherwise wouldn't be able to, but for everything.
To draw my line in the sand, I have no problems with people pirating works they simply don't have any other access to. American shows that aren't broadcast overseas, for example; pirate away.
I don't personally do it, but I don't have any problems with those that do. Others, however, simply incur piracy as a matter of course. Looking for a new album to listen to? Limewire. Looking for a movie? Pirate Bay.
While I don't mind downvotes, that I repeatedly get voted down while suggesting that yes, even though copyright is wrong, it is the law, and people should either respect it or engage in civil disobedience (which is a public affair) instead of just casually pirating every piece of content they consume, it is telling of the more and more common mentality (or at least is becoming more common on HN.)
> To draw my line in the sand, I have no problems with people pirating works they simply don't have any other access to. American shows that aren't broadcast overseas, for example; pirate away.
Really? The problem I have with this argument is that you remove control of the creation from the creator. What if they are in the process of trying to make a distribution deal while people cut off demand at the knees by stealing the product instead?
Much like the linked article, that position takes that control away. YES the industry sucks at distribution and their offerings are terrible and expensive, but I don't think that's an acceptable or legitimate reason to pirate things instead.
The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...
If the food is too expensive at your favourite restaurant, you don't pull a runner after the meal, you simply don't eat there, and you hope that in time the owners will realize and make adjustments. But if they choose not to, then that is their right.
> The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...
Actually, you do. That is precisely the point of copyright - all creative works are (well, were, before the advent of the major content companies in the US) implicitly understood as the property of the people. Thus, in order to promote continued creative works, an artificial incentive has to be created to encourage additional creation, e.g. copyright. Copyright doesn't create rights, it postpones them.
This is what few people understand anymore about copyright and the original view of the creative process. Enlightenment ideals held that all creative processes were the right of the people as an extension of the mere fact of being an intelligent being - creative activity is required for effective participation in any human society. It is an inborn part of being human.
I'm not saying this to justify the OP's comment about pirating something not available in your country, although that would be a reasonably valid interpretation of a human's right to the product of other human's creative endeavors. If you had 100% certainty that the producer had no intention of distributing that content in your country, you are entirely within your right to find it another way.
The problem is that the content producers these days would claim the opposite - and they do the entirety of the human species, and the whole history and future of human civilization, a disservice by claiming so. I am not engaging in hyperbole here. Even today, we continue to benefit from the knowledge and creations of those thousands of years ago who gave us amazing works. All creative works today are possible due to the works that came before them. The fallout of the infinite lockdown on content ownership that occurs today will not be known for hundreds of years.
> If the food is too expensive at your favourite restaurant, you don't pull a runner after the meal, you simply don't eat there, and you hope that in time the owners will realize and make adjustments. But if they choose not to, then that is their right.
Stuff like this really hurts your argument, IMO. When you eat at a restaurant and then don't pay, that restaurant loses a substantial amount of money. When you pirate something, the creator loses zero money.
Saying that "when you pirate something the creator loses zero money" is an even worse argument.
You actually missed my point though (but I concede I used a rather simplified argument).
I was actually taking the "it's not available in my area" or "it's to expensive" argument of the OP to justify piracy to its logical conclusion.
I was pointing out that you can't circumvent the creator/owner's choices or restrictions on distribution, availability and pricing (i.e. "the food is too expensive here") just because you don't agree with them. It's not a level playing field.
If you don't like the creator's choices, don't participate in his creation. There really is no other choice.
While digital media creates the illusion of the "victimless crime" because you aren't taking something physical, it doesn't remove the fact that you are benefiting from someone else's hard work without agreeing to their terms of use, whatever those may be.
If it is your belief that the creator's terms of use should reign supreme, that is legitimate, but if you want to argue for it then you need to actually argue for it.
I wouldn't say that I missed your point, merely that I objected to a particular argument you used it making it. I realize this is a lower level of discourse than addressing your main point entirely, but I'm hoping that it would raise the level of discourse overall.
For reasons I've never understood, copyright advocates love comparing copyright infringement with physical theft. If copyright infringement is bad then it should be possible, nay preferable, to argue this on its own merits, not through bad analogies.
They argue that way because their inflated claims have no merit. The only justification for copyright that doesn't amount to arrogant and unjustifiable claims of "creator privilege" (my phrase, but that is what their wordy arguments amount to) is that given in the US Constitution, as a practical matter "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".
You might notice in "useful arts" that an argument could be made right now, that fiction, music, movies, and video games never should have been covered. And, in fact, music wasn't covered for decades afterward.
I'm hopelessly biased here, because I make video games. But do you not feel that the world would be worse off--culturally and technologically--without a commercial video games industry? And do you not think that the utility of games--faster and more ubiquitous computers--is self-evident when you compare it to a world without a commercial video games industry, but extremely difficult or impossible to anticipate in advance?
Maybe I'm making assumptions that you don't agree with--perhaps you think that a thriving video games industry could exist as strongly in the absence of copyright, or that the video games industry hasn't encouraged advances in computers--but both my claims seem fairly uncontroversial to me.
This is appealing but not actually true. In the absence of copyright, no contract exists for downloading the game client, which means no EULA can be enforced. In the absence of a EULA, there are zero legal barriers[0] to people setting up private servers, which are protocol-compatible with the free game client, and hosting their own game, which destroys the business model of the MMO creator.
This is more-or-less an impossible problem to solve technologically at the moment: MMO servers are (by definition) too contended to do more than act as more than glorified packet switches for authoritative clients. The only lever to pull is to put more functionality on the server and off the client, but for a variety of reasons this leads to a less satisfactory user experience.
[0] http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/06/07/the-lawbringer-the-history... -- a quick history of the action by Blizzard against the maker of an in-game bot, legally identical to running a private server. Note the claims were all either copyright-related, won by the bot-maker, or involved "tortious interference"--i.e. incentivizing the buyer of Glider to break their EULA with Blizzard, which would no longer exist.
This a very shortsighted view - of course creators lose money due to pirating.
I'm not even speaking about the concept of sells they may have had in place of theft - that is simple conjecture. There is no doubt that less money flowing in to the industry, as a direct result of piracy, means less money for creators. Is anyone honestly suggesting media sales haven't declined due to pirating?
I'm not a proponent of the industry as it currently functions, but I dislike the offhand spread of disinformation - less money spent on purchases will indirectly, and sometimes directly, result in less money for creators.
Creators fail to gain money. It's not the same as losing money.
By all means, let's talk about the effects of piracy on creators' profits. But let's not pretend that a pirated copy costs the creator anything.
The action and consequences of stealing versus pirating are different. They deserve to be discussed differently. Linking them together is clumsy and doesn't further the discourse.
That sort of argument just comes off as a word game to me, I don't really know what to say to it. It is similar to saying no one dies when they jump out of a window, it is the impact that kills them.
Well, let's look at the various outcomes. There are, I think, three possible actions to consider: A) taking and paying B) taking and not paying C) not taking.
For a restaurant, we get: A) restaurant benefits B) restaurant loses C) restaurant suffers no effect either way.
For piracy, we get: A) creator benefits B) creator suffers no effect either way C) creator suffers no effect either way.
Consider what happens if I organize a thousand people to carry out (B) on something. If it's a restaurant, this could easily drive them out of business. If it's a creator of copyrighted content, they continue with their business as usual.
Note: I'm not saying that (B) is good, or acceptable, or justified, or should be legal, or anything like that, when it comes to copyright infringement. I'm just saying that the two scenarios entail significantly different consequences, and should not be treated as the same thing. Treating them as the same doesn't help the discussion at all: it simply causes people who agree with you to nod their heads, and people who disagree to think you're being disingenuous.
If piracy takes root as something that people 'should' do, then B) in your piracy example leads to the same outcome as B) in your restaurant example.
It deprives them of any income, and removes the incentive and ability for them to produce further content as a means of living in the future.
That deprives all of their future contributions and damages the commons. In summation, at scale, the outcome for both B) scenarios IS the same, and if it is at scale, then there must be an effect not at scale, whether or not you refuse to accept it.
(B) at scale only leads to the same outcome if a substantial number are converted from (A). If people are only converted from (C) then the outcomes are completely different.
In short, the effect of piracy depends entirely on whether the pirates are potential customers. The effect of dine-and-dash does not depend on that. This is, I believe, an extremely significant difference.
There's a common flaw in this line of argument. In your (B) example, you need to do one more level of analysis:
i) Would have paid if it were the only option, but would rather get
something for nothing
ii) Would not have paid under any circumstances
Assign probabilities to each of those events and now you know the probability of harm to the creator. Option (i) could be low, but it is not a 0% probability which means that for a sufficiently large sample size the (B) scenario does cause the creator to suffer.
Leaving restaurant without paying = stealing.
Downloading = fraud.
One is hurting a business by creating direct loss, the other one creates no direct loss (and it is not clear it is hurting anyone...)
So according to you, us customers, should shut up and let them dictate how we spend our money? You should come back to reality, customers have the money, and if we say "There is a problem with the way the entertainment industry works", then there is a problem.
And the lack of offering is a legitimate reason to "pirate", I have tons of hands on examples where piracy does not hurt in any way the industry:
I lived 5years in North America, got used to certain shows, enjoy some of those shows, and have no way of seeing them from my current country, so because the entertainment industry fails to realize that we live in a global world, I should just shut up and take it? I don't think so, so i occasionally download, i download something that i had no access to, something that was not and would have never been available in my country.
The internet and file sharing offers a channel that otherwise would not be available to a lot of people, and the entertainment industry (as well as you) are still living decades in the past. We live in a globalized world, we expect everything to be globalized and we are right to expect so.
And please could we stop with the "creators", "artist", it is not about them and as never been. Piracy does not hurt them in any way, it never has. The entertainment industry does, by taking ridiculous amounts of money out of every sale, deal, show, leaving most of the bands in "debt" when they decide to drop them because they didn't "reach targets" (which is another layer of bullshit right there).
It is time for some people here on HN, to stop make this issue about the artist and creators, because it is not about them, it is about a system that is profoundly broken, and that the internet finished.
It is time for a change in the way the entertainment industry works, the way copyright works, the way artists/creators are remunerated, not a time to point fingers at each others and play on semantics or other fallacies.
The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...
I agree, and I'm surprised so many people miss this. If everyone simply refused to use content that was not distributed under acceptable terms the content creators would change the terms.
I don't disagree, and in practice, I don't pirate except where encouraged by the content owners.
Admittedly, I don't know how or why that particular justification is okay with me, except that I know a number of expats who simply don't have access to American television in any other way.
I understand and agree that I'm being hypocritical, and I agree that piracy is "not okay", which is why I don't do it. However, I simply can't judge the piraters who do so out of lack of availability with the same stance that I judge those who do so casually, or as a matter of course, or because they don't agree with DRM, or because they don't like the record producer, or whatever.
Unavailability just seems like a less shallow justification to me to an act that it still equally wrong.
> The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...
Legally? Indeed. Ethically? I disagree. I have the RIGHT to partake in what is part of my culture. Whether I like it or no, series, games and movies changed my worldview and made me the person with a extensive cultural knowledge I am today. Of course, I can do with what I can see legally, and I do, but although the TV series here in Flanders are very, very good, there's just not that much of them. And I can go to the theatre, but when was the last time a cinema in Belgium showed "2001"? And does any big company really deserve to make anymore money of that?
Or consider this. I'm a huge fan of "My Little Pony". The series and the community around it have enriched my life enormously. What are the odds that without the internet and without piracy I would have ever seen it?
Without piracy, I would have been a much less interesting person and I believe I have the right to be the person I am today.
It's so rare to find someone who thinks like me on this. There is a lot of bullying via downvotes when it comes to this. It seems you can't disagree. It becomes a big "let's pat each other on the back because we're all right" party.
But you're right. It seems like a lot of this bragging about piracy is a thinly veiled excuse and a thinly veiled justification of what they're doing. This a new phenomenon that I think people my age (20's) and younger are part of where we feel entitled to just get whatever via free downloads. It's so weird that a community all about business would have such an anti business view on this. It's one thing to be against SOPA-like laws and the growing power of copyright but why are we for totally abolishing it? It makes more sense to simply try to stop the overreach of power and scale back copyright.
Everyone is both a creator and a consumer. Those are two competing interests and business is all about competing interests and it makes the market go round. Swinging the power away from creators and giving it all to consumers is just as bad as doing the opposite. We should be fighting for the balance of rights and not trying to give it to any one group. Just because there are more of us than of them (in a sense) doesn't mean it's right. It's one thing to want to distribute income from the few to the many, to fight for the rights of minorities, etc. but this whole getting rid of copyright thing is strange. There's a part of me that sees it as a childish attempt to cry to get whatever you want for free.
I think copyright infringement by itself is unfair and impolite, but at a certain point, some organisations have taken action that probably realigns the hierarchy of acceptable behaviour when it comes to copyright infringement.
Under no circumstances ever should people actively sabotaging the freedom of expression of the entire world ever be supported by any payments from anyone, ever. Especially not the people whose world they're trying to destroy. When it comes to organisations that have lobbied for or support SOPA, piracy of their works is to me the second best step on a ladder of approaches.
1) Boycott them, there is nothing wrong with this plan, you shoot yourself in the foot a little if they made something you want and you refuse to purchase it due to principles, but it's probably the most noble of all approaches.
2) Pirate anything they produce that you wish to consume. You may be making an impolite move and breaking a law that if it were used to protect other organisations that weren't such poisonous vile scum it would be immoral to break, but at least you're not feeding the beast.
3) Actually pay them for their content, at this stage you are not breaking any laws but you are effectively contributing to their continued existence and their lobbying to destroy the world as we know it.
If absolutely NOONE picks door number three, the problem will finally be solved. And this entire debacle is all the evidence anyone should ever need that they so desperately deserve destruction.
That is, I think, the most salient part of the original post, one that I had never considered before. Buying anything from those organizations is effectively money going towards lobbying and DRM and all those harmful things. I had never looked at it that way before.
Great comment, although I'd like to add that I believe pirating isn't really an occupation of greed. It's about convenience. Finding and downloading movies is a pain in the ass. But driving 5km away to rent or buy a piece of plastic and packaging is even more of a pain in the ass.
For the past year I've been paying for Netflix, and while the selection isn't always the greatest, the sheer thought of pirating has gone down considerably.
Do I want to pay $8/mo or do I want to spend time finding, downloading, dealing with codecs, categorization and management of movies that I will probably delete later?
If Netflix could offer every movie, every tv show and/or a music subscription that worked on any device, would I ever want to pirate? Even if it was $20/mo?
As producers of creative works, we need to understand the psychology of our audience, more than we need to understand the economy of the industry.
Perhaps your "life is unfair" line could be extended to the artists who feel it's their natural right to take advantage of the diminishing costs of digital distribution.
They aren't charging to get the song physically to you. They're charging you for the right to play it. Up until now, that has been easiest via payment on transfer of the physical good. Now that we have new mechanisms, they're still allowed to set the terms under which you may use their music.
For example, radio stations pay more. They may have the physical CD in their grasp, but they have to pay to play it on air. DVD shops get charged more per video because they rent it out repeatedly - they don't just use the same home version as you do and pocket the difference. Changing the distribution mechanism to radio stations and DVD shops to digital doesn't change the concept of copyright owners being able to set the terms of use for their content.
Now, would I like a whole new approach? Sure. I long for ways to reinvent the industry, like crowdsourcing aspects of music production, marketing etc. There will be many ways to make a living from music in the future. But that doesn't mean I think it's ok to just make up the rules as I go along and copy anything that I fancy.
But if it's an attempt to make something happen (stop SOPA), then it's not working and is in fact counterproductive, so please just STFU. You are offsetting the good hard work of so many others trying to make the right things happen.
Make no mistake about it, we have reached the point where the best course of action is probably to simply appeal to the common people's innate sense of "fairness".
Copyright is not fair. We get that.
Pirating is not right. Most people would agree with that, too.
Multiple wrongs do not make a right; most people's reptilian brains sense that, too.
Long ago, before the Code of Hammurabi, the common code of law was often unfair. If, for example, I accidently killed your daughter, the penalty was to put my daughter to death. Such logic today is laughable and modern people would never put up with it. Except that's exactly what SOPA is, penalizing Party B for Party A's transgression. We don't do that anymore.
There are other good arguments against SOPA, but yours is not one of them. Instead of influencing those who need to be influenced, you are just fanning the flames of SOPA proponents. Hell, after reading your article, I almost understand their reasoning...they need to do something to stop your wrong to stop someone else's wrong to stop someone else's wrong, etc.
It's time to stop the cycle of doing wrong to combat other wrong, and just start doing right. It works better anyway. It would be nice to have you on board for that.
I have more to say, but unfortunately, someone in another thread did something wrong, so a moderator has turned off the rest of my comment...
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