7 ms·

Quote: "those who would seek to pirate my security content are probably more likely to do evil things with it " Everytime I see this indoctrination, i can't he

by coretx 10y ago

Quote: "those who would seek to pirate my security content are probably more likely to do evil things with it " Everytime I see this indoctrination, i can't help but to set the record straight. People who commit "Piracy", or te be more precise: Copyright infringement, because "Piracy" actually means large scale infringement with a commercial motive; are NOT more or less "moral" or "ethical" than people who do not commit copyright infringement. ( And strictly speaking, they almost don't exist. ) This is also why mindsets that can be portrait as "Why don't we just give the consumer what it wants? " actually works in practice, not just in theory. Look at the succes of Spotify & Netflix for example. "Piracy" is about convenience and market failure. It's not about money and certainly not about immoral people or ethical superiority.( But it sometimes IS about rentseeking. ) Even if you disagree with this statement and think that "Because Money" , you should not only look up what a freeloader problem is; but also what deadweight loss in economics means as this effectively means that copyrightholders are stealing welfare and money from everyone, if you'd interpret the concept with the hardline type of thinking often associated with "Anti Piracy" type of people.

WaxProlix 10y ago
You've double posted. You should consider deleting one of the two posts.
- coretx 10y ago
  Thank you! I just removed the double post. =)
jinfiesto 10y ago
I generally agree with the statement that "piracy" is usually about market failure, but it seems to be pretty clearly about money here. Someone stole and edited that content and was subsequently selling it elsewhere...
- coretx 10y ago
  If we as two individuals or "we" as society at large ever wish to have a non-political thus solution focussed debate or discussion on piracy; one of the first preconditions would be the need for understanding the ontological nature of things and therefore for example not using emotionally loaded descriptions such as "Theft". It's not only factually incorrect, it's also misleading to masses of intellectually less gifted people. In fact, it even makes some of them agressive, totally destroying whatever rational thinking processes that might have been going on. You'll probably agree when i claim that's not constructive at all.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    No, I don't agree. If someone spends time creating course content, someone else steals it and sells it, "theft" is exactly the correct word. If you do this in Kindle World - copy words from a book, and sell them as your own in a different book with your name on it - you get taken down and thrown out, and the author may sue for lost income. Online course content is no different. It's theft. There is no other word for it.
    - coretx 10y ago
      The law disagrees with you virtually all over the world. What you call "theft" in the case of your example is called copyright infringement, and in the case of large scale infringement with a commercial motive it's called piracy. (Yet not within a UN or EU setting, due to actual seafaring pirates being mentioned in various treaties.) These are facts I just presented to you, now please take into account that sensible people tend to discuss facts, and debate opinon; not the ohter way round because that would seem ehhwr, you probably get the point. Besides the legal reality contradicting your statement, both ontological and metaphysical reality also contradicts you. One of the characteristics or nature of "theft" is that the (previous) owner is being left empty handed... Due to the nature of a copy, this is clearly not the case. Enough words spend on the ludicrous "theft" hollywood spindoktering "word". Let's be adults here. Due to existing legislation, the so called rights holder has a reasonable expectation regarding the amount of income he can generate due to copyright legislation. In almost every country, it's a legal principle to be able to draw certainty from the law. This works out pretty well in almost every field of law yet it absolutely does not in the case of copyright legislation due to the fact that virtually everyone commits copyright infringement with incredible ease plus the fact that compelling people to comply with the law can basically only be properly executed post instating a surveilance/police state. What we see here, is legislation dictating how we run our business, almost drafting complete businessmodels; followed by "promises" granted by this very same legislation not being uphold and potentially costing us a lot of money. This is a problem, and obviously undesireable. Business should decide on their business models within the boundaries of the law. Not legislators. From this notion forward we might actually be capable of finding a solution that works for everyone. Dropping words like "Theft", and criminalizing humanity while assaulting their associated rights and proclaiming that the current situation should be uphold is going to get us nowhere besides more of the same problems. By now, 2016, it would no longer be strange to conclude that both friend & foe, citizen & creator, are done with that type of Sht and desire real solutions on the table a.s.a.p ! So please, i beg you. Next time in a similair situation; explain to people how potentially lost income plays a role in someone his daily life and how unfair this can be, add appropriate details, arguments, facts, whatever you like! But please* cut the "theft" crap. Thank you in advance!
- contravariant 10y ago
  I also think that there's a big difference between distributing illicit copies of a work and plagiarising it for profit. The first might be considered market failure but the second most certainly is not.
- mfjordvald 10y ago
  With the specific sentence mentioned Troy is not referring to the Udemy content but rather a more general piracy case. So while Udemy is clearly about money the general piracy case referred to probably isn't.
Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
The biggest drawbacks of Spotify and Netflix is the limitation of content, which comes from the fact that not all labels or movie studios are supportive of this. This is not an inherent problem of the platform itself of course. If this problem was non-existent, I am pretty sure that both services would be used by almost everyone.
- BerislavLopac 10y ago
  If this problem was non-existent, Spotify and Netflix would close down as free, community-based (i.e. open-source) solutions would would appear. Because the "limitation of content" is what copyright is all about, with artificially enabled "content owners" preventing everyone else to access the content. Netflix and Spotify are just convenient channels for the content monopolists to charge for the access to "their" content.
  - coretx 10y ago
    I'd like to complement that copyright is meant to increase the total amount of access to culture, knowledge, etc. Not to deter it. Furthermore i'd like to add that in the case of atleast European competition law it is not allowed to use a dominant market position in market A in order to gain a dominant market position in market B. What we see today however, is that certain dominant market actors destroy the types of businesses you predict by means of endless torrents of lawsuits ( Grooveshark for example.) while at the same time buying competing stocks such as for example Spotify. Due to the international nature of these affairs and the insane spaghetti of legal persons created and being involved; it's unfortunately near impossible to commit further investigations into these matters.
jasode 10y ago
>"Why don't we just give the consumer what it wants? " actually works in practice, not just in theory. Look at the succes of Spotify & Netflix for example. Fyi, Spotify is not a success (yet). Spotify would actually be an example of it working in theory but not in practice because the music streaming service has been losing money since its inception.
- coretx 10y ago
  That's only the case due to the fact that Spotify is not a so called "Rights Owner", not to be confused with a actual artist. These "Rights owners" do not only hold a monopoly, but also decide if and to whom they license at a totally arbitrary pricepoint. No competition, No marginal price. No free market equilibrium. The market failure here lies in the overextension and application of copright law, not in Spotify.
whack 10y ago
Piracy can be a convenience/market-failure issue, but it can also be a theft/moral issue. There are plenty of people out there who simply love taking stuff for free. If they could steal food from a grocery store, they would, but they can't, so they settle for pirating digital content instead. I've met people first hand who don't even try to justify their behavior - they just laugh and tell me they like free stuff. Regarding your comment about deadweight loss: Yes, in a perfect marketplace, any product with a marginal cost of 0 should be priced at $0. But this ignores the fact that numerous products, including books and software, have very significant upfront costs that vastly exceed their marginal costs. If everyone pirated them on the basis of your economic theory, those industries would completely collapse.
raesene9 10y ago
Whilst piracy can sometimes be about "market failure" I don't see that being the case here. The content in question is available world-wide via pluralsight. The author has set a price for his content and it's up to consumers to choose whether they wish to pay for this content or not. Someone who bypasses this and chooses to pirate the content has made a moral choice not to pay the author for their time as requested. There is no large corporate here restricting access to content, this is a person who has put in work to create something and released it at a specific price. If no-one is willing to pay for content then how will content producers be able to afford to make more? Personally I try to pay content creators wherever I can for the content they produce. I subscribe to patreon for several webcomics and youtube series I enjoy and buy technical books where available for topics I'm interested in. I'm absolutely capable of going and getting all my content for free to but choose not to do so, because it seems obvious to me that if everyone does that, the content I like will no longer be available, or will have to have other monetization means (e.g. advertising) that I'm not a fan of. For me the rampant piracy problem is a classic tragedy of the commons. People like the content but would rather others paid for its production.
- newscracker 10y ago
  > There is no large corporate here restricting access to content, this is a person who has put in work to create something and released it at a specific price. Hope I've understood this sentence of yours correctly. Actually in this case, Pluralsight, which the author of the blog post has published courses on, is a large corporate in the software/technical training domain and has acquired many other training companies in the last few years. Pluralsight is highly restrictive in that it does not allow downloads of course videos (just a limited offline cache using its proprietary DRM restricted player) or moving them to a device or system of the paying user's choice. Compare this to DRM free publishers like O'Reilly, Packt and many others (see my other comment elsewhere on this topic), Pluralsight is terribly restrictive for users (IMO).
  - raesene9 10y ago
    the author of the blog isn't pluralsight, it's Troy Hunt. Troy isn't an employee of Pluralsight and it's his content that he publishes via their platform. It's his choice as content creator where to publish the content he creates. Obviously if users don't like the platform he's chosen, they can choose not to consume his content, this isn't some situation like a Marvel movie say, where only one company can produce that type of content. There are many other options for security courses.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
FWIW now format shifting has been disallowed again in the UK the percentage of the population committing copyright infringement likely very high -- Mix CD for the car? Infringing. Rip a CD you bought to iTunes? Infringing. Put a DVD you own on your computer? Infringing. Very briefly UK copyright entered the 20th Century (sic); the balance away from the public interest now is so wrong it's ridiculous.

by coretx 10y ago

WaxProlix 10y ago

You've double posted. You should consider deleting one of the two posts.

coretx 10y ago
Thank you! I just removed the double post. =)

jinfiesto 10y ago

I generally agree with the statement that "piracy" is usually about market failure, but it seems to be pretty clearly about money here. Someone stole and edited that content and was subsequently selling it elsewhere...

coretx 10y ago
If we as two individuals or "we" as society at large ever wish to have a non-political thus solution focussed debate or discussion on piracy; one of the first preconditions would be the need for understanding the ontological nature of things and therefore for example not using emotionally loaded descriptions such as "Theft". It's not only factually incorrect, it's also misleading to masses of intellectually less gifted people. In fact, it even makes some of them agressive, totally destroying whatever rational thinking processes that might have been going on. You'll probably agree when i claim that's not constructive at all.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  No, I don't agree. If someone spends time creating course content, someone else steals it and sells it, "theft" is exactly the correct word. If you do this in Kindle World - copy words from a book, and sell them as your own in a different book with your name on it - you get taken down and thrown out, and the author may sue for lost income. Online course content is no different. It's theft. There is no other word for it.
  - coretx 10y ago
    The law disagrees with you virtually all over the world. What you call "theft" in the case of your example is called copyright infringement, and in the case of large scale infringement with a commercial motive it's called piracy. (Yet not within a UN or EU setting, due to actual seafaring pirates being mentioned in various treaties.) These are facts I just presented to you, now please take into account that sensible people tend to discuss facts, and debate opinon; not the ohter way round because that would seem ehhwr, you probably get the point. Besides the legal reality contradicting your statement, both ontological and metaphysical reality also contradicts you. One of the characteristics or nature of "theft" is that the (previous) owner is being left empty handed... Due to the nature of a copy, this is clearly not the case. Enough words spend on the ludicrous "theft" hollywood spindoktering "word". Let's be adults here. Due to existing legislation, the so called rights holder has a reasonable expectation regarding the amount of income he can generate due to copyright legislation. In almost every country, it's a legal principle to be able to draw certainty from the law. This works out pretty well in almost every field of law yet it absolutely does not in the case of copyright legislation due to the fact that virtually everyone commits copyright infringement with incredible ease plus the fact that compelling people to comply with the law can basically only be properly executed post instating a surveilance/police state. What we see here, is legislation dictating how we run our business, almost drafting complete businessmodels; followed by "promises" granted by this very same legislation not being uphold and potentially costing us a lot of money. This is a problem, and obviously undesireable. Business should decide on their business models within the boundaries of the law. Not legislators. From this notion forward we might actually be capable of finding a solution that works for everyone. Dropping words like "Theft", and criminalizing humanity while assaulting their associated rights and proclaiming that the current situation should be uphold is going to get us nowhere besides more of the same problems. By now, 2016, it would no longer be strange to conclude that both friend & foe, citizen & creator, are done with that type of Sht and desire real solutions on the table a.s.a.p ! So please, i beg you. Next time in a similair situation; explain to people how potentially lost income plays a role in someone his daily life and how unfair this can be, add appropriate details, arguments, facts, whatever you like! But please* cut the "theft" crap. Thank you in advance!
contravariant 10y ago
I also think that there's a big difference between distributing illicit copies of a work and plagiarising it for profit. The first might be considered market failure but the second most certainly is not.
mfjordvald 10y ago
With the specific sentence mentioned Troy is not referring to the Udemy content but rather a more general piracy case. So while Udemy is clearly about money the general piracy case referred to probably isn't.

Capt-RogerOver 10y ago

The biggest drawbacks of Spotify and Netflix is the limitation of content, which comes from the fact that not all labels or movie studios are supportive of this. This is not an inherent problem of the platform itself of course. If this problem was non-existent, I am pretty sure that both services would be used by almost everyone.

BerislavLopac 10y ago
If this problem was non-existent, Spotify and Netflix would close down as free, community-based (i.e. open-source) solutions would would appear. Because the "limitation of content" is what copyright is all about, with artificially enabled "content owners" preventing everyone else to access the content. Netflix and Spotify are just convenient channels for the content monopolists to charge for the access to "their" content.
- coretx 10y ago
  I'd like to complement that copyright is meant to increase the total amount of access to culture, knowledge, etc. Not to deter it. Furthermore i'd like to add that in the case of atleast European competition law it is not allowed to use a dominant market position in market A in order to gain a dominant market position in market B. What we see today however, is that certain dominant market actors destroy the types of businesses you predict by means of endless torrents of lawsuits ( Grooveshark for example.) while at the same time buying competing stocks such as for example Spotify. Due to the international nature of these affairs and the insane spaghetti of legal persons created and being involved; it's unfortunately near impossible to commit further investigations into these matters.

jasode 10y ago

>"Why don't we just give the consumer what it wants? " actually works in practice, not just in theory. Look at the succes of Spotify & Netflix for example. Fyi, Spotify is not a success (yet). Spotify would actually be an example of it working in theory but not in practice because the music streaming service has been losing money since its inception.

coretx 10y ago
That's only the case due to the fact that Spotify is not a so called "Rights Owner", not to be confused with a actual artist. These "Rights owners" do not only hold a monopoly, but also decide if and to whom they license at a totally arbitrary pricepoint. No competition, No marginal price. No free market equilibrium. The market failure here lies in the overextension and application of copright law, not in Spotify.

whack 10y ago

Piracy can be a convenience/market-failure issue, but it can also be a theft/moral issue. There are plenty of people out there who simply love taking stuff for free. If they could steal food from a grocery store, they would, but they can't, so they settle for pirating digital content instead. I've met people first hand who don't even try to justify their behavior - they just laugh and tell me they like free stuff. Regarding your comment about deadweight loss: Yes, in a perfect marketplace, any product with a marginal cost of 0 should be priced at $0. But this ignores the fact that numerous products, including books and software, have very significant upfront costs that vastly exceed their marginal costs. If everyone pirated them on the basis of your economic theory, those industries would completely collapse.

raesene9 10y ago

Whilst piracy can sometimes be about "market failure" I don't see that being the case here. The content in question is available world-wide via pluralsight. The author has set a price for his content and it's up to consumers to choose whether they wish to pay for this content or not. Someone who bypasses this and chooses to pirate the content has made a moral choice not to pay the author for their time as requested. There is no large corporate here restricting access to content, this is a person who has put in work to create something and released it at a specific price. If no-one is willing to pay for content then how will content producers be able to afford to make more? Personally I try to pay content creators wherever I can for the content they produce. I subscribe to patreon for several webcomics and youtube series I enjoy and buy technical books where available for topics I'm interested in. I'm absolutely capable of going and getting all my content for free to but choose not to do so, because it seems obvious to me that if everyone does that, the content I like will no longer be available, or will have to have other monetization means (e.g. advertising) that I'm not a fan of. For me the rampant piracy problem is a classic tragedy of the commons. People like the content but would rather others paid for its production.

newscracker 10y ago
> There is no large corporate here restricting access to content, this is a person who has put in work to create something and released it at a specific price. Hope I've understood this sentence of yours correctly. Actually in this case, Pluralsight, which the author of the blog post has published courses on, is a large corporate in the software/technical training domain and has acquired many other training companies in the last few years. Pluralsight is highly restrictive in that it does not allow downloads of course videos (just a limited offline cache using its proprietary DRM restricted player) or moving them to a device or system of the paying user's choice. Compare this to DRM free publishers like O'Reilly, Packt and many others (see my other comment elsewhere on this topic), Pluralsight is terribly restrictive for users (IMO).
- raesene9 10y ago
  the author of the blog isn't pluralsight, it's Troy Hunt. Troy isn't an employee of Pluralsight and it's his content that he publishes via their platform. It's his choice as content creator where to publish the content he creates. Obviously if users don't like the platform he's chosen, they can choose not to consume his content, this isn't some situation like a Marvel movie say, where only one company can produce that type of content. There are many other options for security courses.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

FWIW now format shifting has been disallowed again in the UK the percentage of the population committing copyright infringement likely very high -- Mix CD for the car? Infringing. Rip a CD you bought to iTunes? Infringing. Put a DVD you own on your computer? Infringing. Very briefly UK copyright entered the 20th Century (sic); the balance away from the public interest now is so wrong it's ridiculous.