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When I buy a book, I'm allowed to do a lot of things with it (read it, sell it, burn it) but I'm not allowed to do anything I please. Copyright limitations are

When I buy a book, I'm allowed to do a lot of things with it (read it, sell it, burn it) but I'm not allowed to do anything I please. Copyright limitations are a reasonable thing for society to extend to content producers. What protections should exist digitally, and how should they be enforced by software tools, is a reasonable thing to debate.

realusername 10y ago
I personally don't believe copyright as a concept is reasonable but even if you do, viewing content you downloaded as you wish seems fair to me.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  What if you had to sign up to something, with agreed terms, before you were allowed to download that content? For example, is it OK to agree something is pay-per-view and pay for one viewing, but then exploit whatever technical loopholes are available to save it anyway?
zanny 10y ago
Hate to even invite the rabbit hole, but even on HN you will find many people who fundamentally disagree with your assumption that copyright itself is reasonable in the first place. It is akin to the marijuana legalization movement in many ways - pot was always illegal, so it should always be illegal, and to question why it is illegal is to be unreasonable. Debate about sentencing, classification, possible medical use - possibly reasonable, but to question the fundamentals starts drawing on cultural and emotional ire and identity that starts breaking down reasonable debate. Copyright to many works much the same way - especially when no new works have entered the public domain in the lifetime of the vast majority of the populace - it has always been there, thus even if you debate duration you assume it must remain because to question why it exists in the first place is, again, to be unreasonable.
- olalonde 10y ago
  That may well be true but in that case, the comment probably should have been "I oppose copyright because X and Y". Otherwise, it's hard to tell whether the commenter really was making a statement against copyright or simply being overly reductionist without realizing it.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  People are perfectly entitled to disagree with the principle of copyright and to advocate for change. Heck, I'm a content creator in several different contexts and I have aggressively lobbied my representatives for changes towards a more reasonable and balanced copyright regime over many years. But the fact remains that copyright is the law today, and encouraging users to break that law is apparently a consequence of what Google did. It's not unreasonable to debate the actual legal situation, not the legal situation that people who don't like copyright would prefer to exist.
syshum 10y ago
>>Copyright limitations are a reasonable thing for society to extend to content producers. No they really are not, and have never been Copyright, historically, is a tool for Information Gatekeeping, censorship, and profiteering. Not one of benfiting the Creators of content See the Talk on the History of Copyright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI We see this every day in the modern era where copyright is used to censor critics, prevent research (especially security research), and prevents more content from being created by locking up ideas for over a century Copyright is a Negative for Society, and for Creators

realusername 10y ago

I personally don't believe copyright as a concept is reasonable but even if you do, viewing content you downloaded as you wish seems fair to me.

Silhouette 10y ago
What if you had to sign up to something, with agreed terms, before you were allowed to download that content? For example, is it OK to agree something is pay-per-view and pay for one viewing, but then exploit whatever technical loopholes are available to save it anyway?

zanny 10y ago

Hate to even invite the rabbit hole, but even on HN you will find many people who fundamentally disagree with your assumption that copyright itself is reasonable in the first place. It is akin to the marijuana legalization movement in many ways - pot was always illegal, so it should always be illegal, and to question why it is illegal is to be unreasonable. Debate about sentencing, classification, possible medical use - possibly reasonable, but to question the fundamentals starts drawing on cultural and emotional ire and identity that starts breaking down reasonable debate. Copyright to many works much the same way - especially when no new works have entered the public domain in the lifetime of the vast majority of the populace - it has always been there, thus even if you debate duration you assume it must remain because to question why it exists in the first place is, again, to be unreasonable.

olalonde 10y ago
That may well be true but in that case, the comment probably should have been "I oppose copyright because X and Y". Otherwise, it's hard to tell whether the commenter really was making a statement against copyright or simply being overly reductionist without realizing it.
Silhouette 10y ago
People are perfectly entitled to disagree with the principle of copyright and to advocate for change. Heck, I'm a content creator in several different contexts and I have aggressively lobbied my representatives for changes towards a more reasonable and balanced copyright regime over many years. But the fact remains that copyright is the law today, and encouraging users to break that law is apparently a consequence of what Google did. It's not unreasonable to debate the actual legal situation, not the legal situation that people who don't like copyright would prefer to exist.

syshum 10y ago

>>Copyright limitations are a reasonable thing for society to extend to content producers. No they really are not, and have never been Copyright, historically, is a tool for Information Gatekeeping, censorship, and profiteering. Not one of benfiting the Creators of content See the Talk on the History of Copyright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI We see this every day in the modern era where copyright is used to censor critics, prevent research (especially security research), and prevents more content from being created by locking up ideas for over a century Copyright is a Negative for Society, and for Creators