6 ms·

"Digital Slavery"? We're talking about owning, or not owning an MP3. Going without it is hardly slavery. It is really very simple. If someone feels the pric

"Digital Slavery"? We're talking about owning, or not owning an MP3. Going without it is hardly slavery. It is really very simple. If someone feels the price an artists asks for their songs is too much, or feels that obtaining a copy legally is too much "work", then they don't need to have a copy. They're not entitled to it for any reason whatsoever.

sid0 15y ago
I can't buy most music digitally (except via places like Bandcamp) where I live. I could buy or import CDs, but I don't like waiting and my computer doesn't have an optical drive. Pardon my French, but if you think I shouldn't listen to music at all because of that, you can fuck right off. It's not as if I'm not willing to spend either. I buy plenty of games from Steam and other places. I buy them because they actually sell stuff in my country and offer me convenience at prices I'm willing to pay. If the music business did the same I'd start buying music instantly. Let's stop guilt-tripping people into buying music through thinly-veiled and largely inaccurate allegories and start treating piracy as an economic problem.
- dextorious 15y ago
  "I could buy or import CDs, but I don't like waiting" So, anyone spoiled enough to "not like waiting" can come and steal the fruits of someone else's labour, right?
  - sid0 15y ago
    Yep. The cost of waiting (up to a month for imports) and buying an optical drive especially for this is prohibitively high. I will not pay that high a price. I also take moral issue to calling piracy stealing.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      You take moral issue to "calling piracy stealing" but not to pirating. Riiiight. Do you actively believe that morality is "mix and match what suits you" or is that just an implicit practice?
      - sid0 15y ago
        Of course I don't believe that morality is whatever suits you. Morality includes property rights, but I do not think the moral rights of the creator of some intellectual property, once his creation is released to the world, extend as far as to be able to impose arbitrary conditions on it. A creator is free to keep his creations private, but once he releases his creation to the market (presumably with the goal of gaining fame and/or profit), the market has a say too.
        untog 15y ago
        But your previous posts say that you don't buy it because it's too difficult to do so. Which one is it?
        sid0 15y ago
        I don't see how my posts contradict each other. I do not think "buy an optical drive, pay through the nose and wait a month for an imported CD to arrive" is a reasonable condition when the trivial alternative of pirating it exists. It's up to content creators to set saner conditions.
toyg 15y ago
Look around you. Entertainment cartels are pushing draconian legislation across the world, making copyright infringement a criminal felony, with harsher penalties than manslaughter; they are threatening to disconnect people from the internet, which in many cases would compromise their livelihood; they are pushing DRM into software and hardware, so that you don't own your device, they do; they support Chinese-style firewalls to blacklist "pirate" websites. All this regardless of whether I actually want to buy their crappy products. If that's not digital slavery...
- earbitscom 15y ago
  They don't care if you want to buy their products. They simply care that, if you do not, you do not also take those products without paying for them. If people were not taking for free things that cost significant money to produce, and did not keep ignoring the light-handed laws that already exist, there would be no need for more draconian measures. But most importantly, what does any of this have to do with whether or not you are entitled to a free copy of the new Bieber album? Don't take things that don't belong to you, and you don't need to worry about having your internet taken away. It's pretty much the same as drunk driving and everything else.
  - sid0 15y ago
    Since you're speaking in terms of entitlements, let's make this clear: the natural state of any idea (including large numbers such as the sequence of bits that make up an mp3) is to be free. Every human is naturally entitled through his consciousness to be able to copy and reproduce any idea he comes across. Any restrictions imposed on them through legal or technical means are artificial and have to be justified when weighed against the costs of imposing them. For instance, protection against plagiarism has a very large benefit for not much cost so it's easily justified. For music it definitely isn't as clear-cut.
    - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
      Conflating the digital representation of items with their value to society isn't any sort of logical argument. It's merely restating the problem in reductionistic terms in an attempt to sidestep the messy, moral consequences of our actions in society.

sid0 15y ago

I can't buy most music digitally (except via places like Bandcamp) where I live. I could buy or import CDs, but I don't like waiting and my computer doesn't have an optical drive. Pardon my French, but if you think I shouldn't listen to music at all because of that, you can fuck right off. It's not as if I'm not willing to spend either. I buy plenty of games from Steam and other places. I buy them because they actually sell stuff in my country and offer me convenience at prices I'm willing to pay. If the music business did the same I'd start buying music instantly. Let's stop guilt-tripping people into buying music through thinly-veiled and largely inaccurate allegories and start treating piracy as an economic problem.

dextorious 15y ago
"I could buy or import CDs, but I don't like waiting" So, anyone spoiled enough to "not like waiting" can come and steal the fruits of someone else's labour, right?
- sid0 15y ago
  Yep. The cost of waiting (up to a month for imports) and buying an optical drive especially for this is prohibitively high. I will not pay that high a price. I also take moral issue to calling piracy stealing.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    You take moral issue to "calling piracy stealing" but not to pirating. Riiiight. Do you actively believe that morality is "mix and match what suits you" or is that just an implicit practice?
    - sid0 15y ago
      Of course I don't believe that morality is whatever suits you. Morality includes property rights, but I do not think the moral rights of the creator of some intellectual property, once his creation is released to the world, extend as far as to be able to impose arbitrary conditions on it. A creator is free to keep his creations private, but once he releases his creation to the market (presumably with the goal of gaining fame and/or profit), the market has a say too.
      - untog 15y ago
        But your previous posts say that you don't buy it because it's too difficult to do so. Which one is it?
        sid0 15y ago
        I don't see how my posts contradict each other. I do not think "buy an optical drive, pay through the nose and wait a month for an imported CD to arrive" is a reasonable condition when the trivial alternative of pirating it exists. It's up to content creators to set saner conditions.

toyg 15y ago

Look around you. Entertainment cartels are pushing draconian legislation across the world, making copyright infringement a criminal felony, with harsher penalties than manslaughter; they are threatening to disconnect people from the internet, which in many cases would compromise their livelihood; they are pushing DRM into software and hardware, so that you don't own your device, they do; they support Chinese-style firewalls to blacklist "pirate" websites. All this regardless of whether I actually want to buy their crappy products. If that's not digital slavery...

earbitscom 15y ago
They don't care if you want to buy their products. They simply care that, if you do not, you do not also take those products without paying for them. If people were not taking for free things that cost significant money to produce, and did not keep ignoring the light-handed laws that already exist, there would be no need for more draconian measures. But most importantly, what does any of this have to do with whether or not you are entitled to a free copy of the new Bieber album? Don't take things that don't belong to you, and you don't need to worry about having your internet taken away. It's pretty much the same as drunk driving and everything else.
- sid0 15y ago
  Since you're speaking in terms of entitlements, let's make this clear: the natural state of any idea (including large numbers such as the sequence of bits that make up an mp3) is to be free. Every human is naturally entitled through his consciousness to be able to copy and reproduce any idea he comes across. Any restrictions imposed on them through legal or technical means are artificial and have to be justified when weighed against the costs of imposing them. For instance, protection against plagiarism has a very large benefit for not much cost so it's easily justified. For music it definitely isn't as clear-cut.
  - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
    Conflating the digital representation of items with their value to society isn't any sort of logical argument. It's merely restating the problem in reductionistic terms in an attempt to sidestep the messy, moral consequences of our actions in society.