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We shouldn’t be glorifying criminals like this. I hope we can move to an online culture that is more respectful of content-creators.
by catenthusiast 9y ago
We shouldn’t be glorifying criminals like this. I hope we can move to an online culture that is more respectful of content-creators.
- literallycancer 9y agoUS law isn't universal.
- cmdrfred 9y agoAnd even under US law, telling someone they give out pirated movies on 5th street (or providing a link to one) isn't illegal.
- steevenwee 9y agoEspecially copyrights laws, that are outdated (to say the list) for to be used on a digital products.
- shrimp_emoji 9y agoIn some parts of the world, being a free Westerner is a crime. I guess I should feel contrite.
- RugnirViking 9y agoSuch as?
- johnfn 9y agoIt's funny to me that even on a community like HN, suggesting rights for content creators gets you downvoted immediately without explanation. As a content creator myself, I side very strongly with you. Well, I don't think we should be jailing the Pirate Bay guys - that's quite extreme - but we definitely shouldn't be idolozing them either, as we often do. To be honest, all the people who try to moralize piracy be saying "oh content creators never would have made any money off things that were torrented anyways" or today's rationalization du jour remind me of slave owners that came up with post-hoc rationalizations for why slavery was totally fine. I'M NOT COMPARING FILESHARING TO SLAVERY. I'm just saying that in both cases, people made whatever decision they wanted to make and screw whoever it effected, and then once they had done that they scrambled to come up with some reason why it was actually okay. I find myself wishing for a karmic equalization such that everyone who espouses those rationalizations could feel the pain that I - like every content creator - has to bear for them. I know it will never happen, but it's an idealistic dream of mine.
- shrimp_emoji 9y ago>"oh content creators never would have made any money anyways" Are you referring to the "lost sale fallacy"? That's one argument, but another is that the content creators DO make money anyways. Particularly, if you make your content affordable (see textbook prices) and usable in whatever way I want (e.g., I can't play iTunes shows in MPC and have to rely on the platform I bought them on), my incentive to pirate your content goes down dramatically. Doing the latter is absurd, though; how do you protect your content from being shared? I don't know either. I guess I'll pirate decrypted copies of it. It IS "wrong", I don't pretend otherwise, but it's cutting the Gordian knot of unfavorable economic paradigms. Kind of like slavery. Except way less worse. See lost sale fallacy.
- baddox 9y agoI think the best example is Steam. A common sentiment online is "I don't pirate games any more because Steam makes it so easy to buy them, plus there are often incredible sales." I share this sentiment. A large part of Steam's success is that they built a better product than the one offered by piracy. That's worth paying for. Granted, this isn't a cure-all. I'm sure some people still pirate games, and it's probably impossible to estimate how many represent "lost sales." Moreover, games are one of the trickier things to pirate, often requiring some technical knowledge (using disk images, keygens, cracks, etc.). Music is obviously much easier to pirate.
- bitJericho 9y agoCopyrights past 7ish years is criminal. I won't respect and support a government and set of laws designed only for the wealthy.
- wrigby 9y agoI agree that life+70 is too long, but just 7 years seems pretty short. I'm interested in hearing your rationale for choosing that number.
- Retric 9y agoCopyright is not the same as trademarks. Disney can keep people from using mickey mouse without life + infinity which seems to be the current system. Movie adaptions for example could be prevented even if the book is in the public domain. 7 years seems short, but revenue capture must balance with the cost to society of copyright. Thus, ~80% of the revenue for 200x the freedom is a viable trade off. PS: Remember the constitution explicitly says it's to promote the creation of new content NOT extract money from existing content. Having an author extract residuals for 50 years discourages new works.
- wrigby 9y agoI think this would be more compelling if you demonstrate that 7 years is long enough to generate 80% of the revenue. For many artistic works, it can take years to produce them (writing a book for instance), and many don't gain traction for years either. Film adaptations of books are a great example. A real-life example: The Notebook (the book) was published in 1996. The Notebook (the movie) was released eight years later, in 2004. With a seven year copyright, the book would be in public domain, and the author may not see a dime from the movie. Is that fair? Is paying the author of the book royalties from the film's revenue a burdensome cost to society? I assert that the author of the book should be able to earn money from the wildly successful film adaptation of his movie, whether he's directly involved with the production of the film or not. I'm sure there are a lot of subtle technicalities I'm missing, but I think the core of this argument stands. I'm in favor of reducing the duration of copyright, but I think something in the region of 30 years is a more reasonable amount of time than 7 years. Regarding the constitution, I think that the means of promoting creation of new works is the ability for creators to profit off of their works. By reducing the potential for profit, you reduce the incentive to create. I can see how overly-restrictive copyright law can inhibit creativity, but I think a 7 year period swings too far in the opposite direction.
- lucideer 9y agoUntil / unless you have a solution for the exploitation of content-creators by content-controllers / content-owners / content-distributors, preaching about respect for them is moot. In contrast, "criminals like this", do net zero or negative harm to content-creators.
- virmundi 9y agoSuch rights are part of a social contract only. When the US decided to implement such a contract, the original duration was 14 years plus another 14 if the owner of the work was still alive [1], and pursed the next term. We've now got to 70 years after the rights owner's death. A question that a lot of pirates have is "does this make sense at a policy level?" Add to that many pirates also purchase more media, the question become more interesting. While I don't condone or use such technology (I'd rather own it and not have to watch our for an enforcer), I don't buy things. If I can't purchase it legally, I don't want it. I've gotten to the point that the whole topic makes me not want to purchase or consume media anymore. I still do, but it's becoming more of a chore with each passing day. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
- agumonkey 9y agoHow is inheritance dealt with ? a family and lineage will surely want to benefit from an ancestor wealth as long as possible be it 14, 70 or even more years.
- virmundi 9y agoI don't see why society needs to care specifically about their desires. The only reason for copyright at all is we think it's best for the person creating a work to have exclusive rights to said work for a period of monetizing. If they have exclusive rights, a person is probably more likely to pursue creation and innovation. It is my contention that the current duration promotes rent seeking, which is against the spirit of the 1790's act.
- agumonkey 9y agoVery good point.
- cr0sh 9y agoWhen the owner of a work is a corporation (eg. Disney), and corporations are considered legal persons (in many ways - including their religion!), then 70+ years starts to make sense in a certain (but ugly) way...
- douche 9y agoBittorrent filled a hole when it was pretty much impossible to legitimately obtain digital content, at any price. When was the last time you torrented a music album? Thanks to iTunes and Spotify and Youtube, you don't really need to anymore. When was the last time you bothered torrenting a cracked PC game? It's not worth the effort, when you can pick it up on a Steam or GOG sale for the cost of a Big Mac and fries. TV and movies are to some extent still locked away like that, particularly movies. I hope that somebody is making an effort to back up that cultural heritage before the cellulose rots.
- tinus_hn 9y agoSpotify wouldn't have existed if the music companies' hand hadn't been forced by piracy.
- toast0 9y agoSpotify is basically launchcast, but with more customers, and launched 7 years later. Internet based music piracy and personalized radio came into popular availability at around the same time, because people started having connections fast enough to download or stream songs.
- xanderstrike 9y agoSpotify succeeded where others failed because the RIAA basically picked it as a winner.
- imh 9y agoAdd to that, I don't even know where I can buy a digital copy of most movies. I know I can sorta rent rights to them on amazon, google, etc, but to actually be able to use it as I please and copy from device to device? Itunes is the only one I know to be close to that.
- Asooka 9y agoWe ARE respectful to content-creators, we're disrespectful to the insane copyright term limits and the trigger-happy lawyers at RIAA and MPAA. If filesharing were going to kill media producers it would have already happened.
- tertius 9y ago> We ARE respectful to content-creators You claim this... Yet say the following. > If filesharing were going to kill media producers it would have already happened. So you claim respect yet you refuse to reward the creator for their work. "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means."
- anigbrowl 9y agoNo you're not. You just pay lip service but I don't see any evidence of actually trying to help out. Where are the great tech grants for the arts, or the artist-residence programs at tech companies, or any kind of support whatsoever? You respect content creators in the esense that you enjoy watching their content and say things like 'This Artist is great!'. That's it. The tech industry has provided useful new tools for artists that didn't exist before, but last time I looked Photoshop and similar products ain't free, far from it.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoTaking culture and locking it away until living memory has expired is what should be criminal. However, if a person chooses to commit a tort and breech copyright and all this third-party did was tell that person where to find someone to help - that certainly shouldn't be considered criminal in any democracy. When the content owning cabals stop lobbying against things like format-shifting then they'll have a moral leg to stand on. Get back to us then.
- s73ver 9y agoIt'd help your argument if you could come up with a moral leg for your side to stand on. What's moral about saying that you should get the works of others without paying their asking price?
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago>What's moral about saying that you should get the works of others without paying their asking price? // Art, which copyright protects, has a unique place in culture. Cultural works owe much to their use, an anthem becomes an anthem after it is penned because it is adopted by the culture and used as an anthem. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yes, when a creator, such as myself, creates a work they deserve to get recompense for it if it adds value to society - just as any other worker deserves recompense for their value generating work. But creators operating in the cultural space demand something from the demos, they demand protection, through the creation of laws, in order to ensure they can exploit their works for financial gain. There is nothing wrong with any of this so far. And use of copyright to stimulate creation in the field of the useful arts is noble, it is right to ensure those adding worth to society get recompense. But copyright has been corrupted far beyond that aim, it has been used as a rod to beat the demos with until it both accepts not being able to access culturally significant works and having to pay many times over for the work of the creators - often not even too the creators. There's no reason that we, the demos, should support legislation that stops us using works where the artists/singer/composer has received many 10s of years of average wages already. That's not a fair deal. And we certainly shouldn't be paying for completely unrelated executives to mint it because their predecessors bought the rights 70 years ago; that doesn't stimulate artistic creation. We're being ripped off and those who suppose to represent the demos instead represent the interests of media corps and their own retirement opportunities. The copyright lobby needs to go first in demonstrating they have a moral high ground because the default is no copyright. Copyright is supposed to be a contract with society, where we gift them a limited term monopoly, without that gift the creators of copyrightable works have no recourse in law to ensure their works aren't duplicated ad liberandum. That may be morally void, but that's the default - a strong case needs to be made to maintain the status quo without returning to that default.
- mirimir 9y agoI get your point. But just what is it to be a criminal on the Internet? I mean, copyright law in Russia emphasizes fair use far more than does copyright law in the US. Laws about pornography are very different in Japan vs the US vs Saudi Arabia. Also, regarding Pirate Bay, the MPAA etc who persecuted them are arguably the major criminals involved. Because they have abused their power to defraud artists, and to fix the prices of CDs and DVDs.
- megous 9y agoI couldn't care less about content creators. I'll start caring a little bit when they stop stealing from me every single time I buy a SD card, or HDD, or DVD, or whatever that has some storage in it that will never see any of their material. Until then... Piracy is also a form of protest and a valid one. It's a shame that when they make something worthwhile at times, I'll pirate it too, but if they want to be indiscriminate, I'll not bother discriminating either. To clarify: I live in a country where we have to pay tax to content creators organization every time we buy something with storage. And it's not an insignificant amount. Justification being: "It can be used for storing copyrighted material (music and movies)."
- s73ver 9y ago"I couldn't care less about content creators." Then stop consuming content. "Piracy is also a form of protest and a valid one." No more than me coming up and taking your stuff, or me hiring you and then refusing to pay you.