4 ms·

The assumption is that most are not ripping the ads out of the magazine without seeing them at all. The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to y

The assumption is that most are not ripping the ads out of the magazine without seeing them at all. The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to you with ads and you take in all of it. You can make all sorts of loose statements like this then draw the line where you feel it’s wrong. It will still be arbitrary. To continue stretching examples. Developers chose to release software as is. Through some combo of your reasoning above, is it okay to pirate/crack software? Most of the time HNers will be against software piracy but for blocking ads. I care more about the obvious social contracts in place and the obviousness of creators are supporting what they created by showing ads or charging for their software. Another example was people getting mad at someone for wanting to split a Stratchery subscription. One big point was it’s against the TOS. Some of those people surely block ads and would not care if TOSs say you can’t. I actually find the Stratchery situation sympathetic because I believe the person was unemployed. Similarly if you have a super old computer or limited data dude to financial constraints. Yeah, that is an exception where the morals make sense. However going against Stratchery, a pretty small time operation by splitting the cost amongst some people for one login is obviously not cool for the average middle class on up person. > If they want money, they're free to return HTTP 402 Payment Required. This is not true in the real world. The amount of backlash you can get for doing that will almost never be worth it. False positives are an issue as well. Similarly, software that requires you to always be online and aggressively verifies you have paid for said software which ends up creating some friction, is frowned upon too. Or Stratchery suspending you or sending similar headers for logging in via IPs far from one another. The false positives would be lead to a Streisand Effect

kreeben 5y ago
>> The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to you with ads and you take in all of it This is the antithesis of what I want the internet to be, so opt me out of that, please, because I'm going to come hither and taketh in that which I care to taketh in, that and nothing else.
- account42 5y ago
  People forget that browsers are called user agents because they are supposed to operate on behalf of the user. That includes displaying the content how the user wants it and not how the server operator wants it.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Exactly! The browser exists to serve us, not to enable some company's abusive business model.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      I’d still be interested to know if you would be fine with pirating/getting around all paywalls and all SaaS app logins, and all other paid online things with the basis of the browser is there to serve us. Whenever this stuff comes up on HN. there’s the initial bits of anti ad self righteousness but never a continuation to see if the general ethos continues outside ads. My purpose of all this is to point out the inherent hypocrisy. Not every ad has spyware or adware. Are those ads unblocked? No. I understand it would take far too much time to unblock specific ads. Which doesn’t help the point of being morally in the right. Same with disagreeing with being able to crack/pirate all paywalls and SaaS subscriptions, et al. If the browser is to serve you.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      Right. So if there comes a day soon where every single online subscription service and SaaS is able to be used for free, we should be able to use all of it for free. The browsers exist to serve us. Not what some view as abusive business models.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Aren’t computers mean to be used the way the computer owner and user wants it to be used? Then there should be no problem for HNers who block all ads if hypothetically some situation comes out where all paid software and SaaS is able to be used freely on a person’s computing device. Since they should operate on the person’s behalf. I doubt most HNers who directly or indirectly work on software/SaaS/apps, and live off that income, would be cool with this.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Sure that’s cool. If you develop software for a company. Or any one you know develops software and charges for it. I hope you’re equally okay with you or your friends livelihoods going away if all people decide to think like you and find charging for any software to be the antithesis of what. They want the world to be. Usually this isn’t the case.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to you with ads and you take in all of it. Nobody ever signed any social contract. You can't even navigate to the page's actual terms of service without being subjected to ads and surveillance capitalism. As if anyone even reads those terms to begin with. Their invalid assumptions are their problem. Nobody else needs to worry about this. It's their business model, it's up to them to make it work. If they send us ads, we're gonna delete them. It's up to them to deal with that fact. > is it okay to pirate/crack software? Of course. DRM is a defect and cracks literally fix products. "Pirates" have the superior version of the software. You'd think it would be the other way around. Pretty sad. > Most of the time HNers will be against software piracy but for blocking ads. I'm against copyright itself. "Piracy" is not a concept that should even exist. It's how things would naturally be without the illusions provided by copyright.
- kingofclams 5y ago
  This might be a bit off topic, but do you mind elaborating on your anti-copyright philosophy?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Not at all. This is something I'm passionate about. Copyright made sense before computers existed. Back then it was still possible to infringe copyright. For example, people could copy books by hand. However, the scale of such operations was small. To operate at massive scales you had to be a major industry player and own machinery such as printing presses. It's trivial to enforce copyright against such huge targets. Therefore, artificial scarcity was easy to create and it made sense. Fast forward to the 21st century. Networked computers exist and everything is data. Filling up an entire hard drive with copies is as easy as copy paste. It's trivial to duplicate information and transmit data to other computers. People now have worldwide networked computers in their pockets. People now infringe copyright on a massive scale without even realizing what they are doing simply because technology has changed the way people perceive copyrighted works. Nobody really thinks before downloading stuff and sending it to their friends even though this is unauthorized copying and therefore copyright infringement. Nobody thinks before editing some picture and making a funny meme out of it even though it's a derivative work. Nobody thinks before reposting someone else's work on social media. Copyright infringement has become natural. The truth is computers make a mockery of copyright. The fundamental notion behind copyright is artificial scarcity. Computers make data infinitely abundant. It's incredibly subversive technology. Before computers you needed expensive hardware and logistics to produce and distribute a million books or a million records. With computers it's a trivial task. The world has been changed forever and there's no way to go back. They're definitely trying to rewind the clock though. To create artificial scarcity of data in the 21st century, free computing must be destroyed. We must not be allowed to run arbitrary software or make our own software. Hacking as we know it must come to an end. They must lock down computers so that we can only run software they approve, software that obeys them instead of us, software that only copies when they authorize. This is completely aligned with government interests in banning civilian use of cryptography. I say computers are too important to allow them to become mere tools of aging industries and oppressive governments. Copyright makes no sense in the 21st century, it's time to abolish it. The alternative is to give up our computing freedom. I'd rather sacrifice the entire copyright industry than live in such a bleak future. Copyright is also a tool that corporations use against other countries via political pressure by the US government. These corporations are extremely rich, they can afford to lobby the US government to the point it applies pressure on foreign nations. I've posted about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946738 I wish I could find one particular news article I remember reading years ago. It was about some MPAA official who came to my country to lobby the government on their copyright interests. Some journalist approached him and asked him point blank if he thought this should be a priority in a country that fails to offer even basic infrastructure such as sanitation to its entire population. Obviously he had no response. Copyright holders also lobby governments in order to extend copyright duration indefinitely. They have effectively robbed us all of our public domain rights. I've written about this before too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29426856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29426856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28813563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28813563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28518061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28518061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28413192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28413192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22757439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22757439 You can see everything else I've posted about this using this query: https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=copyright%20matheusmoreira https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=copyright%20mathe...
saila 5y ago
Print ads don't have any security risks, they don't track you, they're less distracting, and they don't cost you anything extra like bandwidth. I think your analogy might hold up if ads on the web weren't so intrusive.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  The analogy doesn’t need to be perfect. Every excuse can be used. Others can have excuses for why they morally believe pirating software developed by you, your friends, etc, is warranted. The end result is still having your work being used without compensation.
  - saila 5y ago
    I don't see not viewing ads on websites for products I'll never buy as equivalent to pirating software, especially considering the additional costs of compromised security, bandwidth, etc, but it's something to think about. I'm in the camp where I'd gladly pay a fair cost to use a site, if there were a standard way to do so. The challenge here is that many people only view any given site on an ad hoc basis rather than being a devotee who's willing to pay for a subscription. If someone figures out how to solve this, especially the UI and adoption aspects, they'll be a billionaire.

kreeben 5y ago

>> The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to you with ads and you take in all of it This is the antithesis of what I want the internet to be, so opt me out of that, please, because I'm going to come hither and taketh in that which I care to taketh in, that and nothing else.

account42 5y ago
People forget that browsers are called user agents because they are supposed to operate on behalf of the user. That includes displaying the content how the user wants it and not how the server operator wants it.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Exactly! The browser exists to serve us, not to enable some company's abusive business model.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    I’d still be interested to know if you would be fine with pirating/getting around all paywalls and all SaaS app logins, and all other paid online things with the basis of the browser is there to serve us. Whenever this stuff comes up on HN. there’s the initial bits of anti ad self righteousness but never a continuation to see if the general ethos continues outside ads. My purpose of all this is to point out the inherent hypocrisy. Not every ad has spyware or adware. Are those ads unblocked? No. I understand it would take far too much time to unblock specific ads. Which doesn’t help the point of being morally in the right. Same with disagreeing with being able to crack/pirate all paywalls and SaaS subscriptions, et al. If the browser is to serve you.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Right. So if there comes a day soon where every single online subscription service and SaaS is able to be used for free, we should be able to use all of it for free. The browsers exist to serve us. Not what some view as abusive business models.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Aren’t computers mean to be used the way the computer owner and user wants it to be used? Then there should be no problem for HNers who block all ads if hypothetically some situation comes out where all paid software and SaaS is able to be used freely on a person’s computing device. Since they should operate on the person’s behalf. I doubt most HNers who directly or indirectly work on software/SaaS/apps, and live off that income, would be cool with this.
skinnymuch 5y ago
Sure that’s cool. If you develop software for a company. Or any one you know develops software and charges for it. I hope you’re equally okay with you or your friends livelihoods going away if all people decide to think like you and find charging for any software to be the antithesis of what. They want the world to be. Usually this isn’t the case.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to you with ads and you take in all of it. Nobody ever signed any social contract. You can't even navigate to the page's actual terms of service without being subjected to ads and surveillance capitalism. As if anyone even reads those terms to begin with. Their invalid assumptions are their problem. Nobody else needs to worry about this. It's their business model, it's up to them to make it work. If they send us ads, we're gonna delete them. It's up to them to deal with that fact. > is it okay to pirate/crack software? Of course. DRM is a defect and cracks literally fix products. "Pirates" have the superior version of the software. You'd think it would be the other way around. Pretty sad. > Most of the time HNers will be against software piracy but for blocking ads. I'm against copyright itself. "Piracy" is not a concept that should even exist. It's how things would naturally be without the illusions provided by copyright.

kingofclams 5y ago
This might be a bit off topic, but do you mind elaborating on your anti-copyright philosophy?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Not at all. This is something I'm passionate about. Copyright made sense before computers existed. Back then it was still possible to infringe copyright. For example, people could copy books by hand. However, the scale of such operations was small. To operate at massive scales you had to be a major industry player and own machinery such as printing presses. It's trivial to enforce copyright against such huge targets. Therefore, artificial scarcity was easy to create and it made sense. Fast forward to the 21st century. Networked computers exist and everything is data. Filling up an entire hard drive with copies is as easy as copy paste. It's trivial to duplicate information and transmit data to other computers. People now have worldwide networked computers in their pockets. People now infringe copyright on a massive scale without even realizing what they are doing simply because technology has changed the way people perceive copyrighted works. Nobody really thinks before downloading stuff and sending it to their friends even though this is unauthorized copying and therefore copyright infringement. Nobody thinks before editing some picture and making a funny meme out of it even though it's a derivative work. Nobody thinks before reposting someone else's work on social media. Copyright infringement has become natural. The truth is computers make a mockery of copyright. The fundamental notion behind copyright is artificial scarcity. Computers make data infinitely abundant. It's incredibly subversive technology. Before computers you needed expensive hardware and logistics to produce and distribute a million books or a million records. With computers it's a trivial task. The world has been changed forever and there's no way to go back. They're definitely trying to rewind the clock though. To create artificial scarcity of data in the 21st century, free computing must be destroyed. We must not be allowed to run arbitrary software or make our own software. Hacking as we know it must come to an end. They must lock down computers so that we can only run software they approve, software that obeys them instead of us, software that only copies when they authorize. This is completely aligned with government interests in banning civilian use of cryptography. I say computers are too important to allow them to become mere tools of aging industries and oppressive governments. Copyright makes no sense in the 21st century, it's time to abolish it. The alternative is to give up our computing freedom. I'd rather sacrifice the entire copyright industry than live in such a bleak future. Copyright is also a tool that corporations use against other countries via political pressure by the US government. These corporations are extremely rich, they can afford to lobby the US government to the point it applies pressure on foreign nations. I've posted about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946738 I wish I could find one particular news article I remember reading years ago. It was about some MPAA official who came to my country to lobby the government on their copyright interests. Some journalist approached him and asked him point blank if he thought this should be a priority in a country that fails to offer even basic infrastructure such as sanitation to its entire population. Obviously he had no response. Copyright holders also lobby governments in order to extend copyright duration indefinitely. They have effectively robbed us all of our public domain rights. I've written about this before too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29426856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29426856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28813563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28813563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28518061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28518061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28413192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28413192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22757439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22757439 You can see everything else I've posted about this using this query: https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=copyright%20matheusmoreira https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=copyright%20mathe...

saila 5y ago

Print ads don't have any security risks, they don't track you, they're less distracting, and they don't cost you anything extra like bandwidth. I think your analogy might hold up if ads on the web weren't so intrusive.

skinnymuch 5y ago
The analogy doesn’t need to be perfect. Every excuse can be used. Others can have excuses for why they morally believe pirating software developed by you, your friends, etc, is warranted. The end result is still having your work being used without compensation.
- saila 5y ago
  I don't see not viewing ads on websites for products I'll never buy as equivalent to pirating software, especially considering the additional costs of compromised security, bandwidth, etc, but it's something to think about. I'm in the camp where I'd gladly pay a fair cost to use a site, if there were a standard way to do so. The challenge here is that many people only view any given site on an ad hoc basis rather than being a devotee who's willing to pay for a subscription. If someone figures out how to solve this, especially the UI and adoption aspects, they'll be a billionaire.