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I don't understand why so many people on this site defend intellectual property theft. I own a small software company that suffers from piracy every day. I work

by jrd79 16y ago

I don't understand why so many people on this site defend intellectual property theft. I own a small software company that suffers from piracy every day. I worked day and night without pay for more than a year to write the software that I now make my living from. And after all that hard work the thugs and criminals at The Pirate Bay and elsewhere just steal it and make money off the ads or subscriptions. IP is a central and essential part of the world order and no single thinker in the piracy movement has advanced any serious alternative - and yes, I include Lessig in this. Maybe the loud voices in this forum just enjoy stealing other peoples work without having their own work stolen, but bogus free speech arguments and hysterics about jack boots do not justify what is at it's core an immoral act.

Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
I do not think the debate is about theft. The important matter is who decides that it was theft. We have an independent judiciary and that is there for a reason. Whether terrorism or copyright infringement, the government has no right whatever to decide on individual cases and facts. That is the job of the judges. Take the matters to court!
- jrd79 16y ago
  I hear you on this point and should have been clear that I do not approve of actions taken without due process. But I also wish the rest of the posters here would state their opposition to piracy while they defend the pirates on procedural grounds. It's like when skin heads march. All sensible people defend their right to hold a peaceful demonstration but it is good taste to also point out ones disapproval of the ideas those skinheads espouse. The lack of voices making such clarifications has been notable. And it sounds like typical apologist arguments. To those lamenting this action: do you pirate music, movies, or software?
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    Personally, I only pirate your software. Seriously though, you could be making the same case for slavery prior to the 13th amendment.
notahacker 16y ago
You don't need to think what TorrentFinder is doing is justifiable or constitutionally protected to think that government shouldn't have the power to interfere with DNS systems without due process.
- jrd79 16y ago
  I agree completely that due process is essential and that this action doesn't pass the sniff test in that department. But while Voltaire was willing to defend the speech (and presumably the due process rights) of those with whom he strongly disagreed, he did take the time to point out his disagreement while doing so. I would just like to hear more voices in this forum express their distaste for IP theft when they are forced by the foolish actions of the government to speak out in defense of pirates. I just get the sense that some people here might have pirated material and defend the pirates and second guess the business decisions of IP holders as a sort of sub-conscious defense mechanism. No one wants to think of oneself as a bad person but surely software piracy is wrong.
araneae 16y ago
I think it's because we believe that once we pay for something, it's our right to do whatever we want with it... and that includes giving it to friends. The problem with the Internet is that it makes it possible to bypass original sales in an unprecedented way because the cost of giving it to strangers comes at no cost to us. Any solutions necessarily involves infringing on free speech (this) or infringing on an individual's right to do what they want with their purchases (DRM), so yes, I do support torrenting.
- jrd79 16y ago
  Most software is not sold but licensed and those licenses restrict the kind of sharing you are talking about. If what you suggested were allowed then one book publisher would only have to buy a single copy of a competing publisher's most popular book and then reproduce and sell it themselves but without paying royalties to the author. Are you really suggesting that creators of IP should not be able to profit from their work? Where do you work such that such a world would not directly impoverish you? Not to mention destroy the entire US economy. While I understand that there are serious due process questions raised by this story, the tone in this forum seems to go beyond that to outright support of intellectual property theft. That is worrisome to me.
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  I think it's because we believe that once we pay for something, it's our right to do whatever we want with it... So, if you rent a car, does that mean its OK to drive it around the corner and sell it to someone else? you paid to get hold of the car, so it's yours, yes? Oh, wait, no it isn't. You paid to rent it for a finite period under certain conditions, and signed a contract to that effect. the same is usually the case where software is concerned, but since you don't like the terms of the software contract too much, you feel free to ignore it, and redefine your licensing of the software as a purchase, granting yourself all kinds of new rights which the original creator never intended to give to end users. Now, you're welcome to say that software is way overpriced or those terms are so onerous you refuse to comply with them, a point of view I have some sympathy with. But at least be honest about the fact that you're choosing to ignore the contractual terms offered by the licensor and agreed to by the licensee. edit: I don't mind being downvoted, but at least point out why you think the argument is flawed. Otherwise you're just blaming the weatherman for telling you that its raining.
ScottBurson 16y ago
I haven't seen anyone in this thread defending intellectual property theft (though there are certainly people out there who do so) or the activities of these particular sites. Rather, what disturbs many of us, myself included, is government censorship without due process of law. We are concerned that once the precedent is laid, its use will inevitably expand to cover sites whose activities make the government uncomfortable for different reasons (WikiLeaks being a good example). As a software author myself, I sympathize with your situation, but the risks here are much bigger than the loss of income to piracy.
tomjen3 16y ago
Economically it does not matter how hard you worked, only what value others put on it. And secondly, but far more importantly, I for one am not willing to give up my freedom of speech and right of due process to protect your monopoly on a few specific bit patterns. We give murderers, rapists, even child molesters their day in court and the right to question the evidence brought against them, to question and examine witnesses, to be judge by a jury of their peers and to petition the government for redress of grievencess but if they help others find places where they can search for specific bit patterns and make a copy of those, we give them none of these rights? At this point all that is left is realize that I have been trolled.
mambodog 16y ago
I'm sad to hear that you've been on the wrong end of software piracy. I guess it's easy to feel that the whole continuum of torrent sites and copyright infringement can be boiled down to one group, motive and morality, but unfortunately reality is a little more complex than that.
Detrus 16y ago
Lots of people here sell software through subscription, or get revenue from ads. Others are satisfied with profits from various mobile app stores. Although there is piracy there, there are enough buyers because prices are cheap. So the definite culprits of piracy are not "thieves" but bad pricing and inconvenient installation. The absence of "thieves" would not translate into more sales.
- jrd79 16y ago
  Subscriptions are great and we offer one as one of our products. Obviously we have no piracy problems there. But our software is arguably more sensibly delivered as desktop software due to it's cpu and file size considerations. So while we started with an online offering, users demanded a desktop version and we delivered. It is easy to assume that because your business is not a victim that those business that have suffered are just not as good at delivery, but I think you are wrong and I would argue that even businesses that make bad decisions deserve to have their IP protected by government action.
  - Detrus 16y ago
    Maybe they do deserve protection, but that's not how the real world works. Right and wrong are decided by groups of people, not moral absolutes. Here more people seem to care about freeing knowledge than profiting from it. They see large entities like old IBM, current Microsoft as impediments to progress, overcharging for software, making large profits from business customers and not spreading the benefits of that software or making software poorly suited to the less well off. That's a vague description of the sentiment. Eventually these groups face off in arenas where arguments don't count and someone comes out ahead. It's impossible to stop piracy technologically, lawyers can only threaten or fight little skirmishes for publicity to discourage the general populace from it. Ultimately struggling businesses need to put up more than arguments. It took music companies a long time to get around to that, could have been much smoother with less lawyers and more service.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    If I buy a licensed copy of your software, how many years do I have to wait before I can make copies of it and distribute it freely to others? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?
steveklabnik 16y ago
It seems to me like you're unwilling to listen to others' opinions on this topic, because it's too emotional of a topic for you. You can't say "I'm disregarding all of these arguments" and then claim there aren't any proper arguments against intellectual property.

by jrd79 16y ago

Andrew_Quentin 16y ago

I do not think the debate is about theft. The important matter is who decides that it was theft. We have an independent judiciary and that is there for a reason. Whether terrorism or copyright infringement, the government has no right whatever to decide on individual cases and facts. That is the job of the judges. Take the matters to court!

jrd79 16y ago
I hear you on this point and should have been clear that I do not approve of actions taken without due process. But I also wish the rest of the posters here would state their opposition to piracy while they defend the pirates on procedural grounds. It's like when skin heads march. All sensible people defend their right to hold a peaceful demonstration but it is good taste to also point out ones disapproval of the ideas those skinheads espouse. The lack of voices making such clarifications has been notable. And it sounds like typical apologist arguments. To those lamenting this action: do you pirate music, movies, or software?
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Personally, I only pirate your software. Seriously though, you could be making the same case for slavery prior to the 13th amendment.

notahacker 16y ago

You don't need to think what TorrentFinder is doing is justifiable or constitutionally protected to think that government shouldn't have the power to interfere with DNS systems without due process.

jrd79 16y ago
I agree completely that due process is essential and that this action doesn't pass the sniff test in that department. But while Voltaire was willing to defend the speech (and presumably the due process rights) of those with whom he strongly disagreed, he did take the time to point out his disagreement while doing so. I would just like to hear more voices in this forum express their distaste for IP theft when they are forced by the foolish actions of the government to speak out in defense of pirates. I just get the sense that some people here might have pirated material and defend the pirates and second guess the business decisions of IP holders as a sort of sub-conscious defense mechanism. No one wants to think of oneself as a bad person but surely software piracy is wrong.

araneae 16y ago

I think it's because we believe that once we pay for something, it's our right to do whatever we want with it... and that includes giving it to friends. The problem with the Internet is that it makes it possible to bypass original sales in an unprecedented way because the cost of giving it to strangers comes at no cost to us. Any solutions necessarily involves infringing on free speech (this) or infringing on an individual's right to do what they want with their purchases (DRM), so yes, I do support torrenting.

jrd79 16y ago
Most software is not sold but licensed and those licenses restrict the kind of sharing you are talking about. If what you suggested were allowed then one book publisher would only have to buy a single copy of a competing publisher's most popular book and then reproduce and sell it themselves but without paying royalties to the author. Are you really suggesting that creators of IP should not be able to profit from their work? Where do you work such that such a world would not directly impoverish you? Not to mention destroy the entire US economy. While I understand that there are serious due process questions raised by this story, the tone in this forum seems to go beyond that to outright support of intellectual property theft. That is worrisome to me.
anigbrowl 16y ago
I think it's because we believe that once we pay for something, it's our right to do whatever we want with it... So, if you rent a car, does that mean its OK to drive it around the corner and sell it to someone else? you paid to get hold of the car, so it's yours, yes? Oh, wait, no it isn't. You paid to rent it for a finite period under certain conditions, and signed a contract to that effect. the same is usually the case where software is concerned, but since you don't like the terms of the software contract too much, you feel free to ignore it, and redefine your licensing of the software as a purchase, granting yourself all kinds of new rights which the original creator never intended to give to end users. Now, you're welcome to say that software is way overpriced or those terms are so onerous you refuse to comply with them, a point of view I have some sympathy with. But at least be honest about the fact that you're choosing to ignore the contractual terms offered by the licensor and agreed to by the licensee. edit: I don't mind being downvoted, but at least point out why you think the argument is flawed. Otherwise you're just blaming the weatherman for telling you that its raining.

ScottBurson 16y ago

I haven't seen anyone in this thread defending intellectual property theft (though there are certainly people out there who do so) or the activities of these particular sites. Rather, what disturbs many of us, myself included, is government censorship without due process of law. We are concerned that once the precedent is laid, its use will inevitably expand to cover sites whose activities make the government uncomfortable for different reasons (WikiLeaks being a good example). As a software author myself, I sympathize with your situation, but the risks here are much bigger than the loss of income to piracy.

tomjen3 16y ago

Economically it does not matter how hard you worked, only what value others put on it. And secondly, but far more importantly, I for one am not willing to give up my freedom of speech and right of due process to protect your monopoly on a few specific bit patterns. We give murderers, rapists, even child molesters their day in court and the right to question the evidence brought against them, to question and examine witnesses, to be judge by a jury of their peers and to petition the government for redress of grievencess but if they help others find places where they can search for specific bit patterns and make a copy of those, we give them none of these rights? At this point all that is left is realize that I have been trolled.

mambodog 16y ago

I'm sad to hear that you've been on the wrong end of software piracy. I guess it's easy to feel that the whole continuum of torrent sites and copyright infringement can be boiled down to one group, motive and morality, but unfortunately reality is a little more complex than that.

Detrus 16y ago

Lots of people here sell software through subscription, or get revenue from ads. Others are satisfied with profits from various mobile app stores. Although there is piracy there, there are enough buyers because prices are cheap. So the definite culprits of piracy are not "thieves" but bad pricing and inconvenient installation. The absence of "thieves" would not translate into more sales.

jrd79 16y ago
Subscriptions are great and we offer one as one of our products. Obviously we have no piracy problems there. But our software is arguably more sensibly delivered as desktop software due to it's cpu and file size considerations. So while we started with an online offering, users demanded a desktop version and we delivered. It is easy to assume that because your business is not a victim that those business that have suffered are just not as good at delivery, but I think you are wrong and I would argue that even businesses that make bad decisions deserve to have their IP protected by government action.
- Detrus 16y ago
  Maybe they do deserve protection, but that's not how the real world works. Right and wrong are decided by groups of people, not moral absolutes. Here more people seem to care about freeing knowledge than profiting from it. They see large entities like old IBM, current Microsoft as impediments to progress, overcharging for software, making large profits from business customers and not spreading the benefits of that software or making software poorly suited to the less well off. That's a vague description of the sentiment. Eventually these groups face off in arenas where arguments don't count and someone comes out ahead. It's impossible to stop piracy technologically, lawyers can only threaten or fight little skirmishes for publicity to discourage the general populace from it. Ultimately struggling businesses need to put up more than arguments. It took music companies a long time to get around to that, could have been much smoother with less lawyers and more service.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  If I buy a licensed copy of your software, how many years do I have to wait before I can make copies of it and distribute it freely to others? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?

steveklabnik 16y ago

It seems to me like you're unwilling to listen to others' opinions on this topic, because it's too emotional of a topic for you. You can't say "I'm disregarding all of these arguments" and then claim there aren't any proper arguments against intellectual property.