Aside from attributing all this to the RIAA and the MPAA, I can see a line of thought that might move policy makers in this direction. As time goes on, an increasingly large slice of the U.S. (and world) economy is coming from non-physical goods like software, movies, writing, speaking, etc. Politicians who acknowledge this would want to promote an economic environment that will let these growing industries thrive. I would imagine this is the thinking behind ACTA - we want the world to respect copyright since we expect to rely heavily on it. While people like to (rightly) point out that a downloaded song or movie is not equal to a lost sale, the potential for easy, private transfer of data WILL eat into sales significantly over time if not "controlled."
What the politicians don't seem to acknowledge is that the products of this process are not scarce (although the inputs to the process are). Enforcing the illusion of scarcity (particularly with all the great privacy/crypto we have) must be extremely heavy-handed. We'll have to choose between severe restrictions in our communication (which should bother everyone) and less production of the software and movies that we desire (which would be unfortunate).
The problem with enforcing controls on the web is that even if they are well-meaning and protect copyright holders in the short term, they do untold damage in the long term that can't be estimated or anticipated ahead of time (the butterfly effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect).
Do you think if the internet was 100% government regulated or by a company (e.g. AOL) from day one, that is would have grown and developed as quickly and as well as it has? Or that the many opportunities for creating a web-based business would exist? Of course they wouldn't, because they would have been stifled by well-meaning legislation. The cost and bureaucracy to startups would increase massively. Piracy isn't nice, but it is the price to pay for an open and independent global network. (/rant)
What they also fail to see is that the outputs of this process are also the inputs of this process. Imposing artificial scarcity on the output restricts the input, which diminishes the output, which further affects the input, etc.
Every piece of intellectual output takes as input many, many pieces that have come before.
That's a great point. The truly great works motivate derivative works and copyright doesn't play well with this. No work exists in a vacuum so locking up lots of our culture behind copyright will limit the space of ideas pursued. I've read that book publishers won't even allow quoting from other books without permission from the publisher (they don't trust fair-use).
Still, many of the other inputs: the time of lots of people (many of them very talented) and the money of investors are definitely scarce. I think it's a tricky balancing act. However, I'm not sure the status quo is so terrible. By getting permission or paying, many copyrighted works can be used in new works. In cases where they can't some works may not be created. Along the way, creators can be compensated.
He obviously never read this quote from the world's richest man (talking about piracy in China):
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
If the Obama started listening to smart people in the tech and music industry, not to mention the young people who voted him into power, then he would make far more informed decisions.
> which allows the government to charge people who they think might be about to infringe with a civil offense (for example if you searched "torrent daft punk").
Not as difficult as this:
The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client development a criminal offense if the distributed software was used for infringement.
UDP is peer-to-peer technology, in every sense of the term (there's no implementation-level difference between the client and server). Is everyone who produces an implementation of UDP going to be in potential violation of this measure?
Either this thing's being massively exaggerated, the people who wrote the law have absolutely no understanding of communications technology, or (more likely) something in between.
> The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client
> development a criminal offense if the distributed
> software was used for infringement.
So if someone uses Skype voice or chat to coordinate the downloading and/or distribution of copyrighted material, could Skype have been 'used for infringement' (it's already a p2p app)? What about people peering Android and/or iOS devices together and sharing files?
I think other sources will be needed before anyone can pass a good judgment on this news.
Making the thought that leads to something criminal criminal, how does that prove you did do something criminal? or is the thought criminal? Searching for something illegal is criminal? I'm confused by this and I hope more details emerge.
In the DRM case. If by-passing DRM because criminal, well... I'll be in for some long time in jail. Using Linux to watch DVDs. This is by far the best example of victimless crime I know. Who did this cost any money too? Was the hack of subverting my computer illegal? That could lead to some interesting new ways to prosecute a person whenever needed.
As for copying, I don't condone it but whats a legal alternative that offers at least the minimum amount of freedom offered by the pirate option?
iTunes and Amazon MP3 proved that DRM wasn't required for good sales. They truly offer the freedom to use the media as you want. There not a lot of reasons to be pirating music anymore. Movies, that's another story.
This is also why my local ISP claims to have a "Three Strikes" policy regarding infringement complaints. Through scientific experimentation I've discovered they don't enforce this policy. The point of the little performance is to try to avoid having the law interpreted in a court, where evidence trumps accusation.
The idea is that the accusation alone will be a deterrent. It's bad leadership and it's out-side of the letter and spirit of the law.
Statements like this can frustrate both sides of the debate. Words like "theft" really consist of a cluster of related meanings. Copyright infringement probably satisfies some of them, but not others. I think your case would be better made by stating more directly what you mean. For example: "piracy does not take away someone else's material goods and so is not as immoral as Biden's comparison with smash-and-grab theft would imply."
Theft is criminal and Copyright Infringement is a civil matter (thus far). At least in the eyes of the law, they are different.
Just because users were doing something that negatively affected your business doesn't mean that you can redefine the English language just to make the general population more sympathetic to your complaints. e.g.:
My employer is *extorting* me by requiring that I work
for my pay cheque! I should be able to charge my employer
with extortion!
If charging for virtual goods isn't a viable business then you need to start doing something else, just because you "want" to make money this way doesn't mean there should be the law for it. People download my software for free and I think it's great.
Theft: the act of taking something from someone unlawfully.
There are a lot of things that aren't fun, and I certainly agree that people pirating your software can be a problem, but there is a distinct difference between theft and illicit downloading.
Yeah, the analogy with theft, particularly physical theft, is unconvincing. Counterfeiting is nearer the mark, but there are obvious differences there as well.
My big complaint with these analogies, though, isn't with their accuracy or lack therof. It's that they shed absolutely no light on whether copyright laws are good, bad or indifferent. They imply a moral imperative for copyright laws. This is, to put it mildly, controversial.
The theft analogy has no bearing on the question of whether the bad effects of copyright laws outweigh the good. I'd rather see the copyright lobby concentrate on that question (other than by quoting implausible estimates of the cost of "piracy"). That, at least, is a defensible position that can be debated constructively.
One interesting point that was made was that if people keep calling it theft attitudes may change - or maybe it would simply pave the way to making it a criminal offence.
Ultimately how I always feel is this; if someone is pirating your work then I don't mind if you call them a thief (in anger or whatever). But if you're not one of those people then it's a weasel word to be using.
Assuming your technology #4 really could be created, I don't this is much different from musical piracy. And I'd be just as ok with this as I am with things like peer-to-peer networks existing. Such a technology would be awesome - as you said, it would appear to be magic. And it would be my problem to come up with a new business model, not to outlaw a piece of new technology.
Copying things has existed for a while (although it was never as easy as it is now). We chose to develop copyright despite this because we wanted to promote creation of works like books and music.
I don't necessarily disagree with your larger point, but It's worth noting that copyright was created for exactly this purpose (limit distribution of something that would be easy for copiers to distribute, but hard for them to originate).
I suspect copyright is one of the driving forces in the existence of lots of the information and entertainment I enjoy consuming on a day-to-day basis, so I'm skeptical of tossing it out completely.
Copyrights, trademarks, and patents also weren't as complex and over-bearing when they were first created as they are today. If anything, the content industries only have themselves to blame with their egregious extensions to copyright terms amongst other things.
I don't think there would necessarily be the same 'tear it all down' mentality around (for example) copyright if it wasn't: 1) overly abused and 2) a ridiculous length of time. It also doesn't help that a lot of people feel entitled to copyright, when in reality it is a monopoly granted by the people, not some sort of 'God-given' right.
Copyright is not a basic human right. You may like that you have copyright on what you make, but to claim ownership over ideas is like trying to grab a handful of water.
Also, please don't try to frame this argument as, "If you are against copyright then you must be a pirate!" Please let McCarthy-ism stay dead.
Since you've consistently posted in favour of copyright recently:
* Do you feel the *need* to have copyright 90 years
after you are dead? Is that your only incentive to
create?
* What about retroactive copyright extensions? Are you
planning on 'un-creating' things that you created in
the past because you weren't retroactively granted a
copyright extension so you now have no incentive to
create something that you already created?
If copyright terms were 14 years long (IIRC like they were originally), I think people wouldn't have such an issue. The fact that black & white films like Steamboat Willie are sill under copyright long after anyone can make any significant amount of money off of them is a travesty. This is especially true because a lot of things that are under copyright have become part of our culture (the 'Happy Birthday song' anyone?).
I'm not claiming ownership on my ideas. I'm claiming the right to prevent copying of my software and writing!
> Also, please don't try to frame this argument as, "If you are against copyright then you must be a pirate!"
I'm not - the article isn't about copyright reform, it's about stopping piracy. This post is filled with n-2 people who apparently don't want piracy stopped, and 2 people who've actually had experience with having their works ripped off and oddly enough aren't so keen. If you made something, then someone distributed the source code for that against your wishes, you'd join us.
> While we're at it, do you feel the need to have copyright 90 years after you are dead? Is that your only incentive to create? What about retroactive copyright extensions? Are you planning on 'un-creating' things that you created in the past because you weren't retroactively granted a copyright extension so you now have no incentive to create something that you already created?
1. I'm quite fine with my work going PD after I die. I support copyright reform too - people that support piracy at the same time harm the cause. Saying 'hooray, taking things without permission is awesome' isn't the best way to have a debate about copyright length and PD.
2. No, my incentive to create is that I enjoy it. Money is what I exchange for goods and services in return for my work. Do you make something and get paid for it?
3. Er, no. I just don't like people stealing my work. Do you work on an app? Would you like it if someone ripped off the source code and uploaded it to TPB?
> I'm not claiming ownership on my ideas. I'm claiming the right to prevent copying of my software and writing!
How are you going to do that, though? It just so happens that the natural world does not provide you with an obvious way to do that. If you physically occupy a house, someone has to violently eject you to take it. But if you voluntarily put your software out into the public sphere, someone can copy it entirely in the privacy of their own home, using 100% materials they own! Now it's you who'd have to engage in the violence to stop them: you, or a state acting on your behalf, would have to intrude into their private house, and tell them they can't use the materials they physically own in the way they're doing. That, to me, seems a much worse intrusion on actual property rights than any "intellectual property" defense could justify.
> That, to me, seems a much worse intrusion on actual property rights than any "intellectual property" defense could justify.
We already raid houses in relation to fraud, embezzlement, and other crimes based around intellectual values.
Would I support raiding a house for piracy? I don't think anyone's proposing raiding houses for casual downloaders. If they were an organized piracy network ALA TPB, who have inflicted massive amounts of damage on authors, artists, game makers, and app developers, big and small, then as a writer, a software maker, and an ethical human being I'd certainly support that.
You said you don't believe copyright is a right, so I presumed you don't respect it.
That may be incorrect - if you don't support piracy, I apologize if I've mischaracterised you. There's a lot of people on HN that don't seem to realize that piracy affects small people too and it's sometimes a little frustrating when they themselves, as makers of apps and games, benefit from it.
You want to make something, start by first creating the universe (as Carl Sagan put it). Since you didn't, you already owe a large debt to the universe for just existing (assuming a you've a good life) and to a lesser extent to society for supporting you (with doctors, farmers, builders, roads, schools, stability, security, existence of an economy etc) which is not really repaid in taxes. So, there's a social contract, which people now feel is being abused by creators.
Edit: But yeah, I'd like to live in a stable utopian anarchy as well.
The universe wasn't made by humans. But yes, I pay for my MacBook, I license the fonts I'm using in my web app, I'm going to pay the guy who does my graphic design, I respect the licenses of my Python modules, I write the odd OSS app myself, and I pay taxes. Yes, people do things for other people. Those people - doctors, builders, famers, teachers - deserve to be compensated just like software makers and writers do.
Yes they do. But what's fair compensation? If a doctor saves your life, do you then become his slave? Because if not for him, you'd not exist anymore. No? Then it's obvious that the compensation is only upto a point. What if it was some medicine discovered a century ago that saved you? How do you compensate that person? You need to rely on society to have taken care of or provided for him when he was alive.
If technology progresses to a level where an individual is independent of society (to the point of one planet per person maybe), your ideas would work. Right now society has the upper hand over the individual.
Some would argue that doctors are paid well because they've formed a cartel and fight strongly to prevent others, such as nurses, from intruding on their turf. Something that would lead to healthcare that is both better and cheaper.
I'll let you draw your own analogies to the creative industries.
I'm fairly sure none of the 3 people responding to this HN article are members of cartels. Piracy doesn't discriminate between good or bad. There is no 'major label only' torrent site.
It's not the needing of others, but the inability to price or pay for societal benefits that leads to the social contract you're basically born into.
Another example, what price do you put on having your neighbors being educated or non-violent enough to not kill you the next time they see you and take your family and belongings? In an anarchy, the cost of your own weapons cache maybe, but in current society it's hard to determine. But it's still a benefit to not be living in the stone age or next door to the Huns.
> Another example, what price do you put on having your neighbors being educated or non-violent enough to not kill you the next time they see you and take your family and belongings?
The price I pay of my neighbour not killing me if he feels like it is not killing them should I feel like it - that's the nature of society. We also both fund a police force that will attempt to prevent and punish crime. It doesn't seem hard to determine at all.
Markets work differently from societies - the price consumers pay in a market is the price the provider asks for, for the product the consumer has chosen. The provider could set an unreasonable price if he wishes, but the consumer could always decided that the value provided isn't sufficient and not buy the product.
Haha. Exactly. I think you don't really believe what you read about other societies where this is/was common. And the police are a component of society, but is just having some policemen around enough to prevent crime? If so, I'd be selling you a great Russia investment story.
I'm not sure how society being beneficial makes it wrong profit from making something (if that's what you're saying - to be honest, I'm not suite sure).
OK cool. Society determines copyrights - I think that's good too. Most people think those who make stuff get to determine the price they sell it for (except a few rare cases, eg AIDS medication), so that's what the law states.
Salt Satyagraha was a protest against a government tax, by those in favor of free markets - not a protest against free markets. See the link you just posted.
I brought it up as an example of a society in peaceful revolt against a high price for goods, doesnt really matter who was setting the price, a tyrannical government or producers. They had civil disobedience which has a few similarities to how people flout copyright laws today (not completely the same of course, since they were willing to go jail). Like charging high prices for access to something that's essentially free (salt then, copies of mp3 files now)
Also see how electricity is commonly stolen in developing nations, anti-prohibition activities etc. For examples of societies trying to act through government to regulate payments to people, look at the UK bank bonus tax or the Autralian attempt at a mining super profits tax, and in the other direction blank media taxes, farm subsidies etc.
"A technology emerges that magically makes it easy to copy my SaaS app and use it in its entirety without paying the monthly subscription."
Before such technology existed it would make sense to pursue such a business plan.
But suppose such technology already exists, and you know it. It would be sort of foolish to plan a business that assumed such technology would not be used.
Now suppose that this magic technology was not invented for the purpose of copying SaaS apps, but was an inevitable side-effect of other good, useful, desirable technologies.
A side-effect of the technology that allowed you to build your SaaS app in the first place. Oh, and your app helped shut down other existing businesses that were not using this new technology.
That it can copy your site is simply one of a million things it can do.
Do you fight this technology? Freeze it? Criminalize it?
One of my gripes with the IP industrial complex is that there are companies that lucked out on a transitory scarcity because of a particular stage of technological evolution.
Tools existed for mass-producing physical copies and transmitting virtual copies across large distances (i.e tape and CD production, and radio/TV), but there were still sufficient financial and technical barriers to constrain its application.
These businesses were based on the assumption that cheap reproduction and mass data transfer would never become so cheap or so easy that just about anyone could do it with the push of a button.
The RIAA and MPAA do need to revamp their business model if they want to evolve into the future with the rest of us.
I often wonder why the movie and music industries don't embrace torrent technology. I would definitely pay a reasonable monthly fee to access legitimate and legal trackers that they manage. It's really win-win as far as I can see. Watch what you want when you wants, and the distributions costs drop to next to nothing.
In the case of the Saas app, I think there is usually more to it that can't easily be replicated. For example, while Google email service is very Simialar to what was previously out there, they offer things like large space, reliable (don't laugh) service, trusted branding etc.
Other providers offer quick development of new feature which a copied service can't easily replicate. This is the key, replicability (that's not a word ;p ) or lack of is your protection.
In the end, you can't sit and wait. Even if they don't copy your app, others will offer similar products ( I think this is fair and square) and you will die if you don't continue to provide more to the user.
Ubuntu One is a open source version of dropbox. I don't think dropbox will die because of it. Dropbox hosts the service and offers good support and feature development. Ubuntu's offering might not be as good. Even if it is, Competition is everywhere.
They have money to fill great convoys of dumptrucks and you have nothing?
This is not a joke, it's the reality. If you managed to scrape enough money together to have power in the world, you could start playing power games too.
We need to address this with a decentralized system they can't crack down on.
How is Gitorious making money? Everything I saw on google said they don't even have a business model. If so it's hardly a good example of what all people who would like to make money from what they're good at (writing software) should be doing.
Why do you think smart people can't make stupid decisions now and again?
I doubt he's getting full and accurate data and I doubt he's really had time to spend on the issue that this needs given the other major issues that need to be dealt with.
He's probably only getting one side of the story, as the anti-piracy lobby has the money, power and influence to be able to bend the ear of those high up enough to make a difference. Spend enough time listening to one side of the debate, and you have the VP eventually making dumb comments like the Tiffany's quote.
Richard Stallman probably would probably not clear White House security checks (joke)
You know, there's the off chance that:
1. He is smart.
2. As the President of the United States, he is getting all the data he needs.
3. You're the one who's wrong.
I'm not saying it's necessarily true, but it sounds a little funny to say "yeah he's either stupid or ignorant" about someone who is very likely neither. It's possible he just disagrees with you, despite being smart and knowledgeable.
I merely stated my own personal doubt that inside the echo chamber he was seeing the same things we see and that alone could explain the decision.
I didn't say that was the only possibility. I just mentioned it was the one I thought most likely.
I think it's always important to remember smart people can make stupid decisions based on flawed data. I was reminding the poster I was replying to about this possibility.
I did not actually say that Obama necessarily did this here. Though I do think it likely actually... but it's hard to tell, I don't have lunch with the guy.
As the President of the United States, he would have the power to stop this policy from being put in motion. If he had the intellect, he would realize that this is a bad idea and he would stop it. At this rate, he'll doing as much bad as McCain does to the Internet in my opinion.
It would be worth stopping or slowing, but putting someone in jail? How does that help anything? Destroy someone's life over a download?
Plus, letting the Music/Movie industry keep things as they are is slowing progression. If the government is going to get involved in this they need to also insure that new (i.e. online) competition is allowed in on media distribution. The existing players have a monopoly on it, and a monopoly is something that provably hurts the economy.
The law isn't proposing to destroy lives of casual downloaders. They'll get a fine at most - which is what all legislation I've ever seen does. Jail is inevitably reserved for more organized networks.
> Plus, letting the Music/Movie industry keep things going as they are
Piracy also affects the software industry and independent artists. Like me, like the other guy in this link that had his worked nicked, like our Bingo Card Guy. Piracy doesn't distinguish between good people and bad people. It's about getting things you want without paying for them.
There is no pirate site that refuses to steal from indie artists, ethical companies, or OSS contributors.
New online competition is media distribution is allowed! My company sells it works directly, so do heaps of independent artists. Nobody from other companies or the government can stop us selling work online.
My point is; the model is wrong. An expensive, outdated method is being used because distribution of these movies is controlled by a small established group with deep pockets. I don't imagine the producers like the situation, nor the stars of the movie. They would probably make more if they could just release their film online instead of paying a middle man to package it up and ship it around.
If the government is going to step in and try to stop piracy, fine. I want to live in a world where I can write an application and become financially independent from it (and without having to give it away and get paid for support, yuck!). But they also have to address this issue that these old, but rich companies are hurting the economy by insisting on being inefficient middle men that customers don't care about and probably not creators of the content either.
OK, it sounds as if we're both agreed about piracy being bad.
Re: control of distribution, for large budget films, unfortunately, the people who fund them want to limit the 0-day release to cinemas - as they find it's more profitable, which probably helps pay for all those special effects. Personally I don't mind - it's their movie.
Yes, I definitely think it's bad. If we don't find a good way to deal with it (not eliminate, even physical goods sellers haven't achieved that, but bring down to more digestible levels) a lot of markets will eventually shrink drastically.
I can understand wanting to limit early releases while the film is still in the cinema. Fair enough, but personally I think after a suitable amount of time has passed the producers should release the films to digital channels (e.g. iTunes) themselves. I don't think the money distributors cream off the top makes anything better. In my ideal world distributors would be producing the DVD/CD/BlueRay disks for the very small (eventually) group of people who still want to consume that way. In other words, they would be by far the smallest group in the picture, not the biggest.
I hope this is just a lip service to quieten the MPAA/RIAA lobbyists. At least to a larger degree it is. Perhaps some changes will be made to the legislation, but nothing as far reaching as "criminalizing p2p development" (whatever it is).
This is more than lip service, Obama filled the DOJ with former RIAA lawyers. And Biden's always been pro-RIAA. It may be cynicism, but Biden's statement is really not surprising.
I find it hard to argue that piracy is beneficial. I am of the mind that intellectual property rights are currently inadequate from my own experiences in patent law.
My main beef is that the RIAA and MPAA have a defunct business model and they are wielding the U.S. legal system as a tool to punish non-violent criminals severely.
I really don't understand how anyone expects to stop people from downloading things for free. It's even possible to get songs directly off youtube and tv shows directly off hulu, just as it is possible to record songs directly off the radio. Nobody seems to notice though.
Good to hear. Anyone on HN that makes something - whether it's been ripped off before or not - needs to be able to know they can do something about it should it happen.
Just another symptom of living in an idiocracy. This situation will work well for the for-profit prisons in the United States, who, like the for-profit health insurance companies, make a profit off of people's misery, and will ensure that America remains #1 in persons incarcerated:
Thankfully, the article does point out the discrepancies in Biden's claims:
Interestingly, the statements seem to fly in the face of a
recent Government Accountability Office study released to
U.S. Congress earlier this year, which concluded that there
is virtually no evidence for the claimed million dollar
losses by the entertainment industry. That study suggested
that piracy could even benefit the economy.
Nevermind facts, we don't care if the evidence suggests that piracy helps the economy, or whether Biden's metaphor is a metaphor and not a substitute for reality, or whether that drug you're taking is not only safe, but healthy, we're still going to toss your ass in jail, or give you a fine you'll spend the rest of your life dealing with.
Ars Technica did a great job thoroughly debunking the claims of the RIAA and MPAA:
But in this country, facts don't really have much weight when it comes to policy making.
The irony of all of this is that like the War on Drugs, instead of keeping people safe and happy, this coming War on Piracy will only serve as a drain on America's economy and morale, and yes, could even result in the creation of a dangerous black market. Tax dollars flushed down the toilet for the purpose of spreading misery and soothing the irrational fears of an aging and nervous minority of rich people.
If you actually read the summary of the linked GAO paper[1], you can see that the authors of this attack piece misrepresented it. Some choice quotes that they neglected to include:
"Negative effects on U.S. industry may include lost sales, lost brand value, and reduced incentives to innovate", "The U.S. economy as a whole may grow more slowly because of reduced innovation and loss of trade revenue", "research in specific industries suggest that the problem is sizeable"
Basically, the report says that piracy has some bad and some good effects, but these effects are extremely difficult to quantify due to the illicit nature of piracy. Nonetheless, piracy is probably a significant problem.
As it becomes easier for people to get stuff without paying for it, production of said stuff will drop. It's common sense, people.
That is unrelated IMO. People have to choose what to spend their money on; marketing (and perhaps social) pressure tends to incite people to see films that are much too often not worth their price; ergo they prefer to pirate them and spend their good money on more useful stuff.
There are many people folks who enjoy the summer blockbuster more than an art-house flick. I would be pretty sad if the options in music, movies, software, and books became severely limited because the system could no longer compensate the creators.
I'm not sure what you are arguing. I was invoking the free market in support of blockbusters. People pay to watch big-budget movies in droves. The free market suggests the creation of blockbusters (particularly sequels) and not art-house films (with occasional exceptions).
I'd bet the black market values blockbusters pretty highly too. However the easier it gets to pirate, the more people will do so and the incentive to create these movies will evaporate.
People who create things should be compensated if we can figure out a system to do so that's not too costly to the general public. "Intellectual property" is a contradictory concept. Claiming that ideas, thoughts, and other non-physical entities "belong" to someone is contradicting the very nature of the universe.
Note: I am an independent content creator (though I don't live from my content at the moment).
""Intellectual property" is a contradictory concept. Claiming that ideas, thoughts, and other non-physical entities "belong" to someone is contradicting the very nature of the universe."
I never understood that point. That's like saying preventing murder is contradictory to the nature of humanity.
The point of societies is to make laws and enforce them, in a way that leads to everyone being better off. As far as I'm concerned, the argument against copyright should only be about whether it makes society better or not; it has nothing to do with morality, and definitely nothing to do with the nature of the universe.
There is an intrinsic cost to murdering someone that's not dependent on human laws. There is no intrinsic cost to reusing an idea, other than that made up by human laws.
I agree that the argument about copyright should be practical, not moral - which is why I'm opposed to starting the discussion from the point of view that authors have a moral right to preventing people from copying their creations. They don't.
> if we can figure out a system to do so that's not too costly to the general public.
No, that's not the basis of capitalism in the slightest!
The point is to work out the price someone will pay and maximise your returns by offering it to them at that price.
It is up to content distributors to set the price they want; and it is up to the public to refuse to purchase if they feel it is too high.
You also seem to be claiming that piracy is purely due to high prices; and that if prices come down piracy will end. This seems unlikely. I am certain we would see less piracy - but much less? Free is always better than any price after all :)
"Intellectual property" is a contradictory concept. Claiming that ideas, thoughts, and other non-physical entities "belong" to someone is contradicting the very nature of the universe.
This is pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumbo. In a wider sense it is certainly correct but, realistically, the idea of intellectual property is used (call it a hack) to simply identify those who contributed to creating something and therefore can (in the eyes of society) ask for renumeration in return for it.
Intellectual property is fucked up (for example; it shouldn't be an easily transferable right, grandchildren - maybe even children - shouldn't get it etc., it is too easy to protect generalities rather than the specific thing you created) but I think the general point has merit.
I worked in the games industry for a short while (for an indie developer) and it is pretty disheartening to see your hard work handed out for free without your consent. It feels like someone is sticking their middle finger up at you. :) And that is what is at issue; we are potentially building a culture where people expect stuff for free and businesses are expected to earn revenue in other ways - to the point that people will take it anyway and to hell with what you think. That's an extremely complex model in my mind and possibly counter productive to innovation.
> I worked in the games industry for a short while (for an indie developer) and it is pretty disheartening to see your hard work handed out for free without your consent. It feels like someone is sticking their middle finger up at you. :)
I'm familiar with this feeling too (as is one other poster). It's not great.
I get the feeling that if someone posted 'someone ripped off my app!' on HN everyone would instantly upmod it. Post that somebody's doing something about TPB and suddenly piracy is assumed to only affect large, evil corporations.
Sorry, what's wrong with being entitled to the benefit of my own work? What right does anyone else have over something I made, with my work, taking hundreds of hours of my time?
I can't believe such a shitty personal attack on someone for daring to say they're entitled to what they create is sitting on HN with +3.
How would you feel if someone uploaded all the source for Woobius to TPB?
I don't think anyone has any particular right to profit from their work. You're arguing for some sort of positive freedom to profit from labor, which unsurprisingly no libertarian-leaning person would really endorse. Not only that, you're arguing that state power should be used to create artificial scarcity that would allow you to profit in that manner!
I don't think anyone has any particular right to profit from their work.
Similarly no one particularly has the right to obtain someone else's work for free. Which is why this argument is a bit silly/flawed because human society doesn't work with such moral absolutes :)
Freedom to profit from their own labor is very much something Libertarians hold dear.
Libertarians want the government to stop interfering in markets.
Yes, but profiting from your labour is typically handled by an exchange of goods, and once the exchange is done, each party has no say over the goods they traded.
Not so with copyright, it limits what people can do with goods after they have been exchanged, and it does so through a state-enforced artificial monopoly. It is definitely government interference in the market. If it was completely free, you would lose control over your creations the second you sell them.
Piracy isn't a market, it's a crime - piracy hurts markets.
It is a market, and it works exactly like any other market. Piracy appears when a large amount of consumers disagree on the pricing of artificially scarce goods, and instead acquire the goods illicitly, by circumventing the artificial scarcity.
The easiest way to combat piracy is through the market, simply provide a better product than the pirated product, and provide it at a price most consumers are willing to pay. Most people pirate not because they want everything for free, but because there is a huge discrepancy between the price of something and what they percieve it to be worth.
There is a reason that, for example, the Apple Music Store is so incredibly successful even though anyone can pirate music easily. They provide a better product (legal DRM-free files conveniently and quickly delivered is better than illegal DRM-free files that are inconvenient to get) at a better price (1$ per song instead of ~15$ for a bundle you didn't want just to get the song you actually wanted).
It is perfectly possible to compete with the pirate market, and doing so can be more profitable than trying the heavy-handed approach and strengthening the monopoly.
> Not so with copyright, it limits what people can do with goods after they have been exchanged
Fair use is awesome. Copyrights shouldn't last forever. Unfortunately, a lot of people have been conned by places like TPB - which punish everyone, including those who make OSS, and people who give away some of their works for free but charge for others - into thinking copyright reform requires advocating piracy.
There are many people who believe authors deserve to be paid, but fair use has a place. In fact, I think most human being fit into that category. Advocating for fair use while advocating stealing alienates everyone from the cause.
I'm not advocating piracy, and neither is anyone else here. However, I think you should be more realistic towards it and realize that it's not such a big deal. Casual non-commercial private copying of stuff probably doesn't hurt anyone. You shouldn't do it, but if someone does, it doesn't equal a lost sale for the creator.
And, to return to the original article, I'm convinced that dealing with it in this heavy-handed way, by adding more legislation, more law enforcement, isn't the right way. And I don't think it helps you or me as creators.
(I also wish people would stop downvoting you just because they disagree, that's really not the HN way. :-/ )
> I think you should be more realistic towards it and realize that it's not such a big deal.
It really is if you've had your work stolen. There are 3 people, last time I checked, in this thread who have. They're all pretty strongly against piracy.
> (I also wish people would stop downvoting you just because they disagree, that's really not the HN way. :-/ )
Hehe, thanks. It's been quite odd to watch - +2, -1, +1 etc as different groups for and against moderate reddit style.
How would you feel if someone uploaded all the source for Woobius to TPB?
I would feel pretty stupid for having allowed someone untrustworthy access to the non-public source code of Woobius. Then I would move on and continue adding features for our registered users, who like to deal with a company like us rather than "someone on the internet who stole the source of one of the up-and-coming construction web 2.0 companies on the web". It would make very little difference to our business model.
However, if someone copied the app, interface, functionality, etc, and made more money than us by doing so, well, I would have to take my hat off, because building a good app is hard, but selling it effectively is harder. If such a person existed, I think we'd be talking to them and trying to hire them or join forces somehow.
The value of an SaaS business is not in its source code (though keeping it private is generally a good idea), but in its existing customer, users, reputation, business connections, etc. Which is why it is an inherently stronger business model than selling bits and bytes (like the record companies do). If recording artists switched to a similar business model (which is perfectly plausible) they wouldn't care about piracy either.
What? You're confusing two completely different things:
* Digital distribution is good for artists, as they can reach their fans without needing a record company to physically shift media. Digital distribution is not piracy. Nobody is disputing digital distribution being anything but good.
* Piracy is bad, as people taking things without paying the people that made them.
Look at Trent Reznor. He's not signed anymore, and gives away Ghosts I as a way of connecting directly with his fans, and making money off Ghosts II - IV, which he charges for.
TPB distribute torrents for Ghosts I which is great, but they also help people steal Ghosts II - IV.
No different that HN's friend, the Bingo Card Creator guy, when he made the desktop version of BGC and had his app ripped off left right and center.
Reznor is pro-piracy also, though. He's openly admitted to being a member of various torrent sites, and says he doesn't care if people pirate NIN works, even the ones he isn't himself distributing on torrents. He's certainly not going to sue anyone for doing so, and if one of his previous labels did, he's said he wouldn't support their suit.
What the politicians don't seem to acknowledge is that the products of this process are not scarce (although the inputs to the process are). Enforcing the illusion of scarcity (particularly with all the great privacy/crypto we have) must be extremely heavy-handed. We'll have to choose between severe restrictions in our communication (which should bother everyone) and less production of the software and movies that we desire (which would be unfortunate).