7 ms·

> Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale?... (Offline-only distribution would count as “abandoned” in this regime.) Let's sa

> Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale?... (Offline-only distribution would count as “abandoned” in this regime.) Let's say I author a book and sell it as a paperback, but decide for whatever reason that I don't want to sell an e-book. Would you apply the same reasoning there? Is it ethical for you to torrent an unpaid for e-book copy because you've decided that's more convenient for you? I'd personally argue that it's not. However if you previously paid for the book and you want to read it on your kindle and i don't offer an ebook, that would be different in my mind. Same thing if you purchased the Tom and Jerry's DVDs and decided you prefer to stream.

mynameisvlad 6y ago
Some of the content actually isn't available for sale in any format. From the article: > While there has never been a complete Hanna-Barbera DVD collection courtesy of Warner Bros. in the US, both the Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts have had complete DVD releases. In addition, the whole Deitch collection shows up on the other Warner streaming app, Boomerang. Because of this, it is baffling that HBO Max does not provide a complete collection of any one era, despite drawing on all three. (emphasis mine)
vbezhenar 6y ago
I’ll pirate book if it’s not available in DRM-free format for reasonable price.
- yters 6y ago
  Do you have a right to everyone's IP who doesn't fit your expectations for reasonable access and price?
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    Legally, no. Ethically...maybe? The United States does have a long tradition of allowing grey areas when rightsholders become unreasonable. Oftentimes these wind up being formalized as right-of-ways, easements, or other access rights. In the case of online streaming, its clear that the rightsholders are consolidated and engaged in monopolistic, anti-consumer behavior. Piracy is a natural response to that type of behavior, so is it really wrong for consumers to fight back?
    - yters 6y ago
      No one has a right to someone else's labor.
      - danielrpa 6y ago
        Intellectual property protections aren't self-evident or part of nature. They are a human creation that, in theory, exist to encourage innovation and increase prosperity. In almost all cases, intellectual property is based on previous intellectual property. Whenever you create a work of art, or work of intellect, you are using the work of "someone else". The vast majority of stories, for instance, use plot devices and elements invented by other humans. IP laws don't necessarily protect these elements - to a large extent because they can't in practice - but they are used nonetheless without special consideration to "someone else's" labor (the inventor of such elements/plot devices). Many of the arguments for extremely strong IP protections ignore that an enormous percentage of IP is acquired from elsewhere. While many authors add much value on top of these existing elements, we still have the problem of the appropriation of such elements without any authorization/compensation. Just because the law protects YOUR additions to the (unprotected) work of others, don't think that your additions are that special. The protections from the law, including extent, duration and penalties are arbitrary and, as I said, not part of nature. People do work based on ideas that are in the public domain. But the differentiation of public domain and non public domain is also a human creation. Why can't IP go into the public domain 15 minutes after they are created? The protection duration is arbitrary and in practice decided by large business lobbies (just see how they increased over time to the current unreasonable levels). So while a lot of what is being discussed is indeed ILLEGAL, it doesn't mean that it is IMMORAL. I recommend that advocates for strong IP protections examine how much of what they are trying to protect is, indeed, uniquely theirs and not traceable to previous work.
        yters 6y ago
        Wouldn't that argument undermine all property protection? What if anything of ours is uniquely ours vs somewhat derivative? Tangible property is even more derivative, i.e. inheriting a house. Absolutely no creativity going on in that case, yet it is protected much more strongly than IP.
  - 5560675260 6y ago
    Personally I don't think that anything intangible can be property. And whenever I purchase something digital I consider the act to be a donation and/or payment for a service of delivery.
    - Veen 6y ago
      It’s an interesting attitude. Of course, if everyone thought that way most of the the things we buy digitally would never be made in the first place.
      - 5560675260 6y ago
        It would be a very different world, for sure. Public funding and patronage would play a significantly larger role than they do now, works produced non-commercially would have bigger prominence. It's harder to say what would happen in absence of patent laws. Higher reliance on trade secrets? Non-competes in every employment contracts? Overall I don't think that we would be significantly worse off, especially now, when it's technically possible for general public to engage in croudfunding.
        yters 6y ago
        I believe even technocratic communism would fail for the same reasons that agrarian and industrial communism failed. Lack of incentive to work hard, Goodhardt's law, destruction of those who try to retain property rights, etc. Even today's open source movement is very parasitic on the commercial sector. Without big tech companies OS would disappear.
        5560675260 6y ago
        I don't thinks that lack of legal protections for IP is in any way an equivalent to communism. Money would still be on the table, it's just the way they are gained would be somewhat different. IP as a concept isn't even that old and our societies managed to exist, produce works of arts and various services just fine. As for the big tech firms - why wouldn't they exist? Would Google be disrupted if tomorrow all patents in the world became unenforceable? Or Amazon? Sure, MS might be in trouble, but what they are doing already feels like a gradual switch to a service/subscription based model.
  - me_me_me 6y ago
    No, and so what? Maybe if you were smarter businessman I would buy it off you instead. But my other option is to get a copy for the 'internet'.
me_me_me 6y ago
Ethics? I don't care too much if mouse company gets more money for their empire from me or not. Lets be real, that money more less goes to people that have nothing to do with people that create shows/content etc. But thats beside the point, I don't care much about it. I am adult, I earn money and at this point in my life my time IS worth money. If the effort/cost of watching a show it greater than firing up torrents, I will fire up torrents. Its not like pirating a show is free, there are hidden 'costs' involved (time == money). You have to manually track episodes you watch, and if interrupted, where you stopped mid episode. You have to get the right version/quality etc etc... All of it is some effort that you have to put in. When you are young or dont have much spare cash, that cost feels much smaller. Watching via Netflix et al. have none of those inconvenience 'costs'. Start netflix -> continue watching. Done. I am now watch it. However the moment that actual subscription costs and hassle of managing subscriptions exceedes 'cost of inconvinience' of piracy. I will pirate it. If I want to watch show X and netfix have only season 1-5 in EU and 1-7 in US, i will pirate it. I pay for netflix and I pirate its shows cuz for some reason even tho EU pays more for Netflix subscriptions we get reduced catalog! I am not sure why this seems so hard for business people to understand. You will never get all people to pay for the 'digital goods'. And thats ok. But the moment that you start throwing obstacles in the way of people willing to pay... well, thats just pushing your customers into BitTorrent arms. I myself only use Netflix at the moment, I am not going to buy disney+ just to watch mandalorian. Ethical/lawful or not, I don't care. I am a customer, you make an effort.
- codyb 6y ago
  "Ethical/lawful or not I don't care" -me_me_me Parody? I'm not sure. Seems like an attitude I'm relatively happy isn't super common in society. If I make a book, I don't "owe you an effort" just cause you don't want to make it available in a format you'd like to consume. And that doesn't give you the right to steal it from me. Now certainly everyone should live under a set of guidelines, no one should be certain efforts that do need to be made, say for accessibility reasons, and we do that as a society for a common good. But if you want to use Betamax and it's going to be expensive for me to support it, I don't owe you that. And it doesn't make it okay for you to just take my work because you will only use your own format. Edit: Also... small creators things get stolen constantly on the internet. It's a big problem for a lot of content creators and probably discourages people from making more art.
wlesieutre 6y ago
Is it ethical to sell a paperback and not an ebook in 2021 knowing that you're making it inaccessible to people who need larger font sizes to read it? Ebook readers are great for book accessibility, but if someone won't sell you an ebook it doesn't do much good. EDIT - I forgot to get to my point, which is that I have no ethical issue with "pirating" content in a better format if the creator (or rights-holder) has decided to only make it available in worse formats. If I want to feel better about supporting the creator, I can buy the worse format before doing that, but then buying a paperback that I don't want feels unethical for other (environmental) reasons. If someone subscribes to HBO Max for a month and then watches a better pirated copy, I have a hard time finding a problem with anyone but HBO there. If anything, paying HBO for their screwed up version is an issue because it encourages them to keep screwing things up like that.
- jfk13 6y ago
  Is it ethical to sell a paperback book and an ebook in 2021 and not provide a braille version, knowing that you're making it inaccessible to the blind?
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    Electronic text formats conveniently also work with screen readers and refreshable braille displays. The great thing about text data is you can display it in a whole bunch of different ways depending on a reader's needs, much more so than with a paperback.
FalconSensei 6y ago
You are right that someone could buy the physical book and them torrent the digital version. But I would consider: 1 - You already forfeited you digital sales because you decided not to have an ebook release. If you make public that there are no plans for a digital release, and not the case that's just delayed compared to print. 2 - Digital books tend to be cheaper. Makes a huge difference for people that read 10 books a month. 3 - Print takes space, which many people might not have. I'm not going to buy a print book at a higher price, just to have to go straight to a used book store and sell it there, so I can torrent the ebook - which would be illegal anyway. Same goes for TV shows and movies. Having dozens of blu-ray+dvd combos is not feasible.
- mocheeze 6y ago
  Libraries can solve issues 2 and 3 for those folks.
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    Depending on where you live and how good is your library selection, yes, and I do encourage people to do that. Growing in up in Brazil though, didn't have much luck at that time, finding things that I wanted. Edit: this was for books in Brazilian Portuguese. When I started focusing on books in English - to prepare to move to Canada - I bought Kindle books because otherwise, I would have to pay for international shipping, buy for high price in a Brazilian bookseller, wait up to 2 months for bookdepository delivery...
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      If, say, create a book where the written content is not the whole experience I want to pass the reader, it's perfectly reasonable to withhold certain formats. If I want readers to experience the size, weight, texture and smell as integral parts of the book, it should be my right to prevent others from putting my name on lesser experiences.

mynameisvlad 6y ago

Some of the content actually isn't available for sale in any format. From the article: > While there has never been a complete Hanna-Barbera DVD collection courtesy of Warner Bros. in the US, both the Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts have had complete DVD releases. In addition, the whole Deitch collection shows up on the other Warner streaming app, Boomerang. Because of this, it is baffling that HBO Max does not provide a complete collection of any one era, despite drawing on all three. (emphasis mine)

vbezhenar 6y ago

I’ll pirate book if it’s not available in DRM-free format for reasonable price.

yters 6y ago
Do you have a right to everyone's IP who doesn't fit your expectations for reasonable access and price?
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  Legally, no. Ethically...maybe? The United States does have a long tradition of allowing grey areas when rightsholders become unreasonable. Oftentimes these wind up being formalized as right-of-ways, easements, or other access rights. In the case of online streaming, its clear that the rightsholders are consolidated and engaged in monopolistic, anti-consumer behavior. Piracy is a natural response to that type of behavior, so is it really wrong for consumers to fight back?
  - yters 6y ago
    No one has a right to someone else's labor.
    - danielrpa 6y ago
      Intellectual property protections aren't self-evident or part of nature. They are a human creation that, in theory, exist to encourage innovation and increase prosperity. In almost all cases, intellectual property is based on previous intellectual property. Whenever you create a work of art, or work of intellect, you are using the work of "someone else". The vast majority of stories, for instance, use plot devices and elements invented by other humans. IP laws don't necessarily protect these elements - to a large extent because they can't in practice - but they are used nonetheless without special consideration to "someone else's" labor (the inventor of such elements/plot devices). Many of the arguments for extremely strong IP protections ignore that an enormous percentage of IP is acquired from elsewhere. While many authors add much value on top of these existing elements, we still have the problem of the appropriation of such elements without any authorization/compensation. Just because the law protects YOUR additions to the (unprotected) work of others, don't think that your additions are that special. The protections from the law, including extent, duration and penalties are arbitrary and, as I said, not part of nature. People do work based on ideas that are in the public domain. But the differentiation of public domain and non public domain is also a human creation. Why can't IP go into the public domain 15 minutes after they are created? The protection duration is arbitrary and in practice decided by large business lobbies (just see how they increased over time to the current unreasonable levels). So while a lot of what is being discussed is indeed ILLEGAL, it doesn't mean that it is IMMORAL. I recommend that advocates for strong IP protections examine how much of what they are trying to protect is, indeed, uniquely theirs and not traceable to previous work.
      - yters 6y ago
        Wouldn't that argument undermine all property protection? What if anything of ours is uniquely ours vs somewhat derivative? Tangible property is even more derivative, i.e. inheriting a house. Absolutely no creativity going on in that case, yet it is protected much more strongly than IP.
- 5560675260 6y ago
  Personally I don't think that anything intangible can be property. And whenever I purchase something digital I consider the act to be a donation and/or payment for a service of delivery.
  - Veen 6y ago
    It’s an interesting attitude. Of course, if everyone thought that way most of the the things we buy digitally would never be made in the first place.
    - 5560675260 6y ago
      It would be a very different world, for sure. Public funding and patronage would play a significantly larger role than they do now, works produced non-commercially would have bigger prominence. It's harder to say what would happen in absence of patent laws. Higher reliance on trade secrets? Non-competes in every employment contracts? Overall I don't think that we would be significantly worse off, especially now, when it's technically possible for general public to engage in croudfunding.
      - yters 6y ago
        I believe even technocratic communism would fail for the same reasons that agrarian and industrial communism failed. Lack of incentive to work hard, Goodhardt's law, destruction of those who try to retain property rights, etc. Even today's open source movement is very parasitic on the commercial sector. Without big tech companies OS would disappear.
        5560675260 6y ago
        I don't thinks that lack of legal protections for IP is in any way an equivalent to communism. Money would still be on the table, it's just the way they are gained would be somewhat different. IP as a concept isn't even that old and our societies managed to exist, produce works of arts and various services just fine. As for the big tech firms - why wouldn't they exist? Would Google be disrupted if tomorrow all patents in the world became unenforceable? Or Amazon? Sure, MS might be in trouble, but what they are doing already feels like a gradual switch to a service/subscription based model.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  No, and so what? Maybe if you were smarter businessman I would buy it off you instead. But my other option is to get a copy for the 'internet'.

me_me_me 6y ago

Ethics? I don't care too much if mouse company gets more money for their empire from me or not. Lets be real, that money more less goes to people that have nothing to do with people that create shows/content etc. But thats beside the point, I don't care much about it. I am adult, I earn money and at this point in my life my time IS worth money. If the effort/cost of watching a show it greater than firing up torrents, I will fire up torrents. Its not like pirating a show is free, there are hidden 'costs' involved (time == money). You have to manually track episodes you watch, and if interrupted, where you stopped mid episode. You have to get the right version/quality etc etc... All of it is some effort that you have to put in. When you are young or dont have much spare cash, that cost feels much smaller. Watching via Netflix et al. have none of those inconvenience 'costs'. Start netflix -> continue watching. Done. I am now watch it. However the moment that actual subscription costs and hassle of managing subscriptions exceedes 'cost of inconvinience' of piracy. I will pirate it. If I want to watch show X and netfix have only season 1-5 in EU and 1-7 in US, i will pirate it. I pay for netflix and I pirate its shows cuz for some reason even tho EU pays more for Netflix subscriptions we get reduced catalog! I am not sure why this seems so hard for business people to understand. You will never get all people to pay for the 'digital goods'. And thats ok. But the moment that you start throwing obstacles in the way of people willing to pay... well, thats just pushing your customers into BitTorrent arms. I myself only use Netflix at the moment, I am not going to buy disney+ just to watch mandalorian. Ethical/lawful or not, I don't care. I am a customer, you make an effort.

codyb 6y ago
"Ethical/lawful or not I don't care" -me_me_me Parody? I'm not sure. Seems like an attitude I'm relatively happy isn't super common in society. If I make a book, I don't "owe you an effort" just cause you don't want to make it available in a format you'd like to consume. And that doesn't give you the right to steal it from me. Now certainly everyone should live under a set of guidelines, no one should be certain efforts that do need to be made, say for accessibility reasons, and we do that as a society for a common good. But if you want to use Betamax and it's going to be expensive for me to support it, I don't owe you that. And it doesn't make it okay for you to just take my work because you will only use your own format. Edit: Also... small creators things get stolen constantly on the internet. It's a big problem for a lot of content creators and probably discourages people from making more art.

wlesieutre 6y ago

Is it ethical to sell a paperback and not an ebook in 2021 knowing that you're making it inaccessible to people who need larger font sizes to read it? Ebook readers are great for book accessibility, but if someone won't sell you an ebook it doesn't do much good. EDIT - I forgot to get to my point, which is that I have no ethical issue with "pirating" content in a better format if the creator (or rights-holder) has decided to only make it available in worse formats. If I want to feel better about supporting the creator, I can buy the worse format before doing that, but then buying a paperback that I don't want feels unethical for other (environmental) reasons. If someone subscribes to HBO Max for a month and then watches a better pirated copy, I have a hard time finding a problem with anyone but HBO there. If anything, paying HBO for their screwed up version is an issue because it encourages them to keep screwing things up like that.

jfk13 6y ago
Is it ethical to sell a paperback book and an ebook in 2021 and not provide a braille version, knowing that you're making it inaccessible to the blind?
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Electronic text formats conveniently also work with screen readers and refreshable braille displays. The great thing about text data is you can display it in a whole bunch of different ways depending on a reader's needs, much more so than with a paperback.

FalconSensei 6y ago

You are right that someone could buy the physical book and them torrent the digital version. But I would consider: 1 - You already forfeited you digital sales because you decided not to have an ebook release. If you make public that there are no plans for a digital release, and not the case that's just delayed compared to print. 2 - Digital books tend to be cheaper. Makes a huge difference for people that read 10 books a month. 3 - Print takes space, which many people might not have. I'm not going to buy a print book at a higher price, just to have to go straight to a used book store and sell it there, so I can torrent the ebook - which would be illegal anyway. Same goes for TV shows and movies. Having dozens of blu-ray+dvd combos is not feasible.

mocheeze 6y ago
Libraries can solve issues 2 and 3 for those folks.
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  Depending on where you live and how good is your library selection, yes, and I do encourage people to do that. Growing in up in Brazil though, didn't have much luck at that time, finding things that I wanted. Edit: this was for books in Brazilian Portuguese. When I started focusing on books in English - to prepare to move to Canada - I bought Kindle books because otherwise, I would have to pay for international shipping, buy for high price in a Brazilian bookseller, wait up to 2 months for bookdepository delivery...
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    If, say, create a book where the written content is not the whole experience I want to pass the reader, it's perfectly reasonable to withhold certain formats. If I want readers to experience the size, weight, texture and smell as integral parts of the book, it should be my right to prevent others from putting my name on lesser experiences.