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I don't know if you have heard of "strawman fallacy" but you and the other guy below saying "So you believe that there is such thing as a news report without co

I don't know if you have heard of "strawman fallacy" but you and the other guy below saying "So you believe that there is such thing as a news report without commentary?" have fallen into that trap. It's not even funny how you go from my argument to "This makes it not valuable" to "A rejection of the concept of IP with different words". Here, let me spell it out for you by copy and pasting the same comment: > You can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free. You'll probably say that's not true because the value you get from WSJ is not news but their commentary, but even in this case that particular "value" is very subjective and for most people it's not valuable enough. - It is fact that you can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free. - And I said the "value" is very subjective. and it's not "valuable enough" for most people. Yet you go on and say I said "it's not valuable". Then somehow go from that to accusing me of rejecting the concept of IP. I don't even know where to start.

SilasX 9y ago
The strawman fallacy is when you misattribute a position to someone. "Strawman" not a catchall for "I don't see all the steps in your argument for how my position X implied Y." I'd be glad to spell those out more explicitly. >...It is fact that you can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free. It is a fact because people copy it. Therefore, you're saying it's not valuable because people can get it elsewhere because it was copied. So, the copy-ability made it valueless, exactly as I inferred from your argument (rather than misattributing it). (late edit: Also, the fact that you insist on "atom-based" and "bit-based" being incomparable doesn't help your case that you're not rejecting IP: "Comparing the economics of a pure bit-based product (media) with a pure atom-based product (camera)".) Okay, perhaps that is not what you meant and therefore it was a strawman -- but that's the only self-consistent, plausible reading I saw. The only other meaning is that, "You can get all the interesting facts contained in this story from different sources, without just copy-pasting." Is that what you meant? If so, it's implausible on its face: why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"? >And I said the "value" is very subjective. and it's not "valuable enough" for most people. Yet you go on and say I said "it's not valuable". Then somehow go from that to accusing me of rejecting the concept of IP. I don't even know where to start. I said that because you dismissed the value on the grounds of it being "subjective", which was close enough in this context to saying "oh, I can't quite put a hard value on it, so I don't have to care about this journalism going away". As above, why don't people just find another non-copied source? Because they non-subjectively do want to look at this specific source. With that said, I do agree that it may not be obvious how your position is tantamount to rejecting IP. But I was deriving that as an implication, not misattributing anything to you. Whether or not you recognize this position as implicitly rejecting of all IP, there is certainly a clear logical chain for how it has such an implication. Edit: I know we're not supposed to talk about downvotes, could they at least wait the 60 seconds necessary to read this?
- pluma 9y ago
  > why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"? Because people come to HN, click on a link, see it's paywalled and leave a comment complaining about it, then move on to a different post. Most people who complain about the paywall likely aren't invested enough in the headline to find another source for the same information. Personally I mostly skim HN for news. If an article is paywalled and isn't profoundly interesting to me, I can spend the time it would cost me to look up alternate sources for the same story just reading something else instead. I don't read WSJ articles because they're better, I read them because they're there. In fact, I actually prefer other news outlets. You're misattributing motives to what boils down to mere laziness. And even in doing that you don't actually have a case because many news stories have alternative sources in the HN comments, especially when they're paywalled or too superficial. So, yes, you're misattributing motives, which is literally how you just defined strawmen.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > If so, it's implausible on its face: why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"? Social objects. The actual value of a particular article isn't the article itself, but the fact that you and other people in the tread have read the same article. In HN discussions, people will go around paywalls not because they can't find another source, but because they want to read the same source as everyone else.

SilasX 9y ago

The strawman fallacy is when you misattribute a position to someone. "Strawman" not a catchall for "I don't see all the steps in your argument for how my position X implied Y." I'd be glad to spell those out more explicitly. >...It is fact that you can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free. It is a fact because people copy it. Therefore, you're saying it's not valuable because people can get it elsewhere because it was copied. So, the copy-ability made it valueless, exactly as I inferred from your argument (rather than misattributing it). (late edit: Also, the fact that you insist on "atom-based" and "bit-based" being incomparable doesn't help your case that you're not rejecting IP: "Comparing the economics of a pure bit-based product (media) with a pure atom-based product (camera)".) Okay, perhaps that is not what you meant and therefore it was a strawman -- but that's the only self-consistent, plausible reading I saw. The only other meaning is that, "You can get all the interesting facts contained in this story from different sources, without just copy-pasting." Is that what you meant? If so, it's implausible on its face: why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"? >And I said the "value" is very subjective. and it's not "valuable enough" for most people. Yet you go on and say I said "it's not valuable". Then somehow go from that to accusing me of rejecting the concept of IP. I don't even know where to start. I said that because you dismissed the value on the grounds of it being "subjective", which was close enough in this context to saying "oh, I can't quite put a hard value on it, so I don't have to care about this journalism going away". As above, why don't people just find another non-copied source? Because they non-subjectively do want to look at this specific source. With that said, I do agree that it may not be obvious how your position is tantamount to rejecting IP. But I was deriving that as an implication, not misattributing anything to you. Whether or not you recognize this position as implicitly rejecting of all IP, there is certainly a clear logical chain for how it has such an implication. Edit: I know we're not supposed to talk about downvotes, could they at least wait the 60 seconds necessary to read this?

pluma 9y ago
> why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"? Because people come to HN, click on a link, see it's paywalled and leave a comment complaining about it, then move on to a different post. Most people who complain about the paywall likely aren't invested enough in the headline to find another source for the same information. Personally I mostly skim HN for news. If an article is paywalled and isn't profoundly interesting to me, I can spend the time it would cost me to look up alternate sources for the same story just reading something else instead. I don't read WSJ articles because they're better, I read them because they're there. In fact, I actually prefer other news outlets. You're misattributing motives to what boils down to mere laziness. And even in doing that you don't actually have a case because many news stories have alternative sources in the HN comments, especially when they're paywalled or too superficial. So, yes, you're misattributing motives, which is literally how you just defined strawmen.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> If so, it's implausible on its face: why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"? Social objects. The actual value of a particular article isn't the article itself, but the fact that you and other people in the tread have read the same article. In HN discussions, people will go around paywalls not because they can't find another source, but because they want to read the same source as everyone else.