4 ms·

today i saw someone on HN call piracy controls "anti-consumer laws"

by JohnHaugeland 4y ago

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
Seems strictly true assuming they're using 'pirating' to mean copyright infringement?
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  That's like saying that murder laws are anti-civilian because murderers are civilians, or that eating plants is deadly because a handful of poisonous plants exist No, a ridiculously overbroad label isn't strictly true. It's strictly false, and the primary example of what strictly false means
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Bracketed numbers, eg (ii) for ease of later reference. Disregarding entirely the morality of the situation, which is immaterial to the statement in question. And disregarding 'making sure creators are reasonably compensated', which is almost tangential (since the earliest eras of man we've had media production, eg cave painting, and so consumers of media, as far as we know without monetary consideration). Those who download material restricted by copyright from torrent sites, without an exception or license are nonetheless media 'consumers'. (i) Copyright laws restrict the activity of these media consumers. (ii) Restricting of media consumption leads, overall, to less media consumption. (iii) Restricting an activity is to be 'anti' that activity. (iv) Conclusion: copyright laws are anti media consumer. (v) Where is your issue with the verity of this? Murder is pro-civilian because it protects civilians, but copyright law doesn't protect media consumers. Your plant analogy seems to be a suggestion that we're making an instance-to-class logical leap (fallacy of accident?). I don't see it, at which step do you think we did that? The argument at hand is more akin to "eating plants will kill some people". I think clause (iii) is the obvious point at which one could challenge this line. You might contend that with no copyright law (2.i) their would be less media production (2.ii) and that this would lead to less consumers (2.iii). But I think this is obviously false, we'd have the same number of consumers but arguably poorer quality media to consume.
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      dressing up nonsense in clauses doesn't make it any less nonsense things aren't anti-consumer merely because individual instances of them carry consequences you don't like, and the vast majority of these laws don't do that you seem to be confusing copyright protection for drm
Avamander 4y ago
You can make a bunch of comparisons here between various shadow markets. Prohibition would be an extreme example but the parallel is in my opinion quite clear. People have and continue to resist oppressive legislation that really mostly affects themselves, not everyone else. Be it drinking, piracy or extreme skydiving. It's ineffectual and breaches people's freedom. A reasonable middle ground here would be forbidding making profit off it, like some better countries have adopted. If we now take a look at the causes, it's quite clear that it shouldn't and can't be improved with restrictions. The underlying reasons and their possible solutions have been highlighted well by cable, Netflix and Steam. Unfortunately streaming services are cable-ifying. We'll probably have to endure and wait for history to repeat again. If you didn't get what I meant - making a service not affordable, cumbersome and restrictive makes people seek alternatives. Third and possibly the worst aspect here is that such legislation has collateral damage. Large players can steal content, revenue and obliterate anyone standing against them - simply by having deeper wallets. There are Kafkaesque content filters that you can't properly dispute. Artists have to agree to unfair contracts to properly earn royalties. Consumers get hurt by idiotic DRM. In the recent years I've seen Google search results being removed with DMCA requests by "unknown" for sharing "unknown" made by "unknown". Lumen DB literally contains entries like this. There's no way they'll improve their behaviour when given more power, there's no way it'll improve citizen's lives, it won't even help artists in any reasonable extent. It would only help a few select shareholders.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  This is primarily off of the topic that I actually raised, which is that anti piracy laws aren't anti consumer That you're able to name some implementations you don't like isn't really relevant Many of these laws exist that you will never learn about because they don't affect you in any way It's like picking the worst politician you can name to show why everyone in the other team is bad Overbroad to the point of missing what you were arguing against
  - Avamander 4y ago
    > This is primarily off of the topic that I actually raised, which is that anti piracy laws aren't anti consumer I listed other anti-consumer laws, how the current ones are both anti-consumer and creator, how future ones can make it even worse. That is very on-topic. > That you're able to name some implementations you don't like isn't really relevant Vast majority of them are terrible, that is relevant. > Many of these laws exist that you will never learn about because they don't affect you in any way Even if that were the case, which it isn't, that doesn't make them good. There's literally no merit you can infer from saying "you don't know about those laws". > It's like picking the worst politician you can name to show why everyone in the other team is bad It's like picking a party and listing what they've done and generalizing from that, that they aren't doing good things. > Overbroad to the point of missing what you were arguing against Intentional attempt at excluding parts of the discussion because you don't have good arguments against them.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
Because they are.

today i saw someone on HN call piracy controls "anti-consumer laws"

pbhjpbhj 4y ago

Seems strictly true assuming they're using 'pirating' to mean copyright infringement?

JohnHaugeland 4y ago
That's like saying that murder laws are anti-civilian because murderers are civilians, or that eating plants is deadly because a handful of poisonous plants exist No, a ridiculously overbroad label isn't strictly true. It's strictly false, and the primary example of what strictly false means
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Bracketed numbers, eg (ii) for ease of later reference. Disregarding entirely the morality of the situation, which is immaterial to the statement in question. And disregarding 'making sure creators are reasonably compensated', which is almost tangential (since the earliest eras of man we've had media production, eg cave painting, and so consumers of media, as far as we know without monetary consideration). Those who download material restricted by copyright from torrent sites, without an exception or license are nonetheless media 'consumers'. (i) Copyright laws restrict the activity of these media consumers. (ii) Restricting of media consumption leads, overall, to less media consumption. (iii) Restricting an activity is to be 'anti' that activity. (iv) Conclusion: copyright laws are anti media consumer. (v) Where is your issue with the verity of this? Murder is pro-civilian because it protects civilians, but copyright law doesn't protect media consumers. Your plant analogy seems to be a suggestion that we're making an instance-to-class logical leap (fallacy of accident?). I don't see it, at which step do you think we did that? The argument at hand is more akin to "eating plants will kill some people". I think clause (iii) is the obvious point at which one could challenge this line. You might contend that with no copyright law (2.i) their would be less media production (2.ii) and that this would lead to less consumers (2.iii). But I think this is obviously false, we'd have the same number of consumers but arguably poorer quality media to consume.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    dressing up nonsense in clauses doesn't make it any less nonsense things aren't anti-consumer merely because individual instances of them carry consequences you don't like, and the vast majority of these laws don't do that you seem to be confusing copyright protection for drm

Avamander 4y ago

You can make a bunch of comparisons here between various shadow markets. Prohibition would be an extreme example but the parallel is in my opinion quite clear. People have and continue to resist oppressive legislation that really mostly affects themselves, not everyone else. Be it drinking, piracy or extreme skydiving. It's ineffectual and breaches people's freedom. A reasonable middle ground here would be forbidding making profit off it, like some better countries have adopted. If we now take a look at the causes, it's quite clear that it shouldn't and can't be improved with restrictions. The underlying reasons and their possible solutions have been highlighted well by cable, Netflix and Steam. Unfortunately streaming services are cable-ifying. We'll probably have to endure and wait for history to repeat again. If you didn't get what I meant - making a service not affordable, cumbersome and restrictive makes people seek alternatives. Third and possibly the worst aspect here is that such legislation has collateral damage. Large players can steal content, revenue and obliterate anyone standing against them - simply by having deeper wallets. There are Kafkaesque content filters that you can't properly dispute. Artists have to agree to unfair contracts to properly earn royalties. Consumers get hurt by idiotic DRM. In the recent years I've seen Google search results being removed with DMCA requests by "unknown" for sharing "unknown" made by "unknown". Lumen DB literally contains entries like this. There's no way they'll improve their behaviour when given more power, there's no way it'll improve citizen's lives, it won't even help artists in any reasonable extent. It would only help a few select shareholders.

JohnHaugeland 4y ago
This is primarily off of the topic that I actually raised, which is that anti piracy laws aren't anti consumer That you're able to name some implementations you don't like isn't really relevant Many of these laws exist that you will never learn about because they don't affect you in any way It's like picking the worst politician you can name to show why everyone in the other team is bad Overbroad to the point of missing what you were arguing against
- Avamander 4y ago
  > This is primarily off of the topic that I actually raised, which is that anti piracy laws aren't anti consumer I listed other anti-consumer laws, how the current ones are both anti-consumer and creator, how future ones can make it even worse. That is very on-topic. > That you're able to name some implementations you don't like isn't really relevant Vast majority of them are terrible, that is relevant. > Many of these laws exist that you will never learn about because they don't affect you in any way Even if that were the case, which it isn't, that doesn't make them good. There's literally no merit you can infer from saying "you don't know about those laws". > It's like picking the worst politician you can name to show why everyone in the other team is bad It's like picking a party and listing what they've done and generalizing from that, that they aren't doing good things. > Overbroad to the point of missing what you were arguing against Intentional attempt at excluding parts of the discussion because you don't have good arguments against them.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

Because they are.