5 ms·

Because the item is a copy, and (digital) copies actually do cost nothing. That is just the physical fact, and people will always have some underlying sense of

by hxa7241 15y ago

Because the item is a copy, and (digital) copies actually do cost nothing. That is just the physical fact, and people will always have some underlying sense of it -- as they should. The idea that you should not be allowed to make copies, but must pay for them, is very unnatural. Humans are evolved to copy and share information -- that is the most effective behaviour. The problem is not people's inclinations, the problem is copyright/IP. You possibly can make some case that IP is a net positive system (although no-one seems to have found any evidence), but nevertheless, its essential structure/mechanism is intrinsically problematic.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
Lots of ideas, and yet you completely miss the point. You're not even talking about the same thing: the parent talks about piracy from an ethical point of view. Meanwhile, you reply with the physical point of view, saying the item is an exact duplicate that cost nothing to produce. Representation doesn't mean a damn thing. It doesn't justify behavior.
- dbingham 15y ago
  Anything digital is inherently valueless. There is no cost to copy it. In a perfectly free market, it would be completely valueless. It is only given value by our legal system of copyright laws. I say this as a software developer and one who is not libertarian in the least.
  - Aqua_Geek 15y ago
    > Anything digital is inherently valueless. There is no cost to copy it. Wouldn't books, then, only be "worth" the cost of the paper on which they're printed? How does making something digital automatically destroy any inherent value?
    - dbingham 15y ago
      Sorry, I meant price where I said value and now can't edit it. But look at it this way, for anything digital the supply is infinite. We currently have legal methods of restricting the supply and some attempts at software or digital methods of restricting it. But even so, the difficulty we've had stamping out illegal piracy is a testament to how artificial and fragile these methods are. With truly infinite supply, the price will always be zero. Why should I pay for something I can create copies of with 'cntrl+c' and 'cntrl+v' ? The only thing that leads me to pay for basically anything is that I can't simply recreate it on my own. The day 3D printers reach the versatility of Star Trek replicators is the day a price based market economy will collapse completely. With infinite supply, there's no need to pay for anything.
  - mattadams 15y ago
    Bullshit. Free market or not, that's an entirely one dimensional view on the value of software. Plenty of software has value -- the software that makes a business more productive, competitive or saves it money has inherent value, not to mention applications in other areas. Competent business owners, managers and technical people making decisions about the implementation of software are very interested in the value of that software and its value to business is exactly why we have an economy that exchanges money for these things.
    - dbingham 15y ago
      I wasn't just talking about software. I was talking about movies, books, music, images, anything that can be digitized. As soon as it's digital, there's a nearly infinite supply. Unless you can find a way to limit that supply the price (sorry, I meant price when I said value) will drop to zero. We currently have legal methods of limiting that supply -- by giving the creator legal control of how digital things get copied. But the difficulty of stamping out piracy even with these legal counter-measures is a testament to how artificial that really is. There are some cases where it is possible to limit the supply of digital goods, and this is best seen in software where access to the code can be limited or the code can be written to be restricted in some way, especially in compiled software or web applications. But this, too, can often be hacked. Note, I'm no fan of free markets. I think they are an enormously clumsy tool for linking 'price' to 'value'.
      - mattadams 15y ago
        Fair enough. I really thought you were advocating something else.
  - hxa7241 15y ago
    (By 'value' you mean 'price' -- copies certainly have value, but they just have a near zero market price, ideally.)
    - dbingham 15y ago
      Fair. Thank you for the correction. But I think this is, personally, one of my problems with free market economics. It conflates value and price too much. If you make a piece of software, or music, or a book and cannot control it's being copied, then how can a market assign value to it? The price is zero. Period. It's free. Unless you can somehow prevent it from being copied. And even with the restrictions of law, we've seen that that is nearly impossible. The only reason price based markets even work for any other sort of exchange is because there is limited supply. With anything digital the supply is inherently unlimited.
- hxa7241 15y ago
  Then what does justify behaviour? Ethics is grounded in physical reality, that is sort-of where the buck stops -- at least it seems a better place than anywhere else. Surely an ethical evalution of an act depends on what the act is. What makes an act bad? If, for example, you say stealing is bad, and are asked why, you can reply that someone loses something -- they could do things with it before, but no longer can. There is a sense of harm, in basic physical terms that we can all pretty much agree upon, simply because we all share the same basic physical condition. But what if it were possible to steal something without taking anything away from someone -- i.e. the basic physical effect is different. Is that still bad? In what way could it be? You could just institute a rule proscribing such an act anyway, and so breaking the rule might seem bad superficially. But that would be like ruling that no-one can go out in the sun on wednesdays -- surely at some point someone will ask why. And there would not seem to be a good answer. That is the way copying is different from taking. Because, at bottom, it does not do anything harmful, and is in fact positive. And that is why people are probably likely to have some underlying sense that copying is morally OK.
  - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
    > And there would not seem to be a good answer. Sure there will, but it depends on whether you are empathetic to the condition of other human beings. A small software vendor sells their product. In effect, they're saying, either pay for a piece of software, or do without it. I could violate that contract, but then I'd be an asshole, because they asked for payment, yet I went and took it without paying. I wish to treat other human beings with respect, especially creators. I may hate copyright, but that doesn't mean I take it out on creators. Their works enrich my life in ways I never would have imagined, and I'm pleased to be able to support them. Jason Fried of 37Signals had a quote recently where he mentioned that, in the case of good products, people are happy to pay for them.
rick888 15y ago
"Because the item is a copy, and (digital) copies actually do cost nothing. That is just the physical fact, and people will always have some underlying sense of it -- as they should." So why don't people have the same mindset about currency? It's just ink and paper that represents a perceived value...very similar to the way digital items work. How about art? It's just paint and paper. Digital copies may cost nothing, but the original usually costs thousands of man-hours and or lots of money. "The idea that you should not be allowed to make copies, but must pay for them, is very unnatural" In the programming community, it seems only unnatural when it involves proprietary software. If a company uses GNU software without giving back to the community (the currency involved with OSS), people here want heads to roll. Just look at any discussion here in HN that involved the thesis theme. Many, many people called him a "thief" and that he "stole" code from Wordpress. In reality, nothing was "stolen" (using your logic). Your mindset will eventually cause the following: 1) Developer wages will decrease over time 2) Most companies will just have a web service as opposed to an app. It means you will be paying a monthly fee for software and it will cost more to the end-user in the long-run.
mdda 15y ago
Isn't that why Software-as-a-Service is much more palatable to a purchaser? It feels like your company is actually doing something for the money spent. If you were to sell the software as a download, people would demand lower prices, since 'after all' they're doing all the work (and hosting is cheap). It's an interesting dichotomy.

by hxa7241 15y ago

mattgreenrocks 15y ago

Lots of ideas, and yet you completely miss the point. You're not even talking about the same thing: the parent talks about piracy from an ethical point of view. Meanwhile, you reply with the physical point of view, saying the item is an exact duplicate that cost nothing to produce. Representation doesn't mean a damn thing. It doesn't justify behavior.

dbingham 15y ago
Anything digital is inherently valueless. There is no cost to copy it. In a perfectly free market, it would be completely valueless. It is only given value by our legal system of copyright laws. I say this as a software developer and one who is not libertarian in the least.
- Aqua_Geek 15y ago
  > Anything digital is inherently valueless. There is no cost to copy it. Wouldn't books, then, only be "worth" the cost of the paper on which they're printed? How does making something digital automatically destroy any inherent value?
  - dbingham 15y ago
    Sorry, I meant price where I said value and now can't edit it. But look at it this way, for anything digital the supply is infinite. We currently have legal methods of restricting the supply and some attempts at software or digital methods of restricting it. But even so, the difficulty we've had stamping out illegal piracy is a testament to how artificial and fragile these methods are. With truly infinite supply, the price will always be zero. Why should I pay for something I can create copies of with 'cntrl+c' and 'cntrl+v' ? The only thing that leads me to pay for basically anything is that I can't simply recreate it on my own. The day 3D printers reach the versatility of Star Trek replicators is the day a price based market economy will collapse completely. With infinite supply, there's no need to pay for anything.
- mattadams 15y ago
  Bullshit. Free market or not, that's an entirely one dimensional view on the value of software. Plenty of software has value -- the software that makes a business more productive, competitive or saves it money has inherent value, not to mention applications in other areas. Competent business owners, managers and technical people making decisions about the implementation of software are very interested in the value of that software and its value to business is exactly why we have an economy that exchanges money for these things.
  - dbingham 15y ago
    I wasn't just talking about software. I was talking about movies, books, music, images, anything that can be digitized. As soon as it's digital, there's a nearly infinite supply. Unless you can find a way to limit that supply the price (sorry, I meant price when I said value) will drop to zero. We currently have legal methods of limiting that supply -- by giving the creator legal control of how digital things get copied. But the difficulty of stamping out piracy even with these legal counter-measures is a testament to how artificial that really is. There are some cases where it is possible to limit the supply of digital goods, and this is best seen in software where access to the code can be limited or the code can be written to be restricted in some way, especially in compiled software or web applications. But this, too, can often be hacked. Note, I'm no fan of free markets. I think they are an enormously clumsy tool for linking 'price' to 'value'.
    - mattadams 15y ago
      Fair enough. I really thought you were advocating something else.
- hxa7241 15y ago
  (By 'value' you mean 'price' -- copies certainly have value, but they just have a near zero market price, ideally.)
  - dbingham 15y ago
    Fair. Thank you for the correction. But I think this is, personally, one of my problems with free market economics. It conflates value and price too much. If you make a piece of software, or music, or a book and cannot control it's being copied, then how can a market assign value to it? The price is zero. Period. It's free. Unless you can somehow prevent it from being copied. And even with the restrictions of law, we've seen that that is nearly impossible. The only reason price based markets even work for any other sort of exchange is because there is limited supply. With anything digital the supply is inherently unlimited.
hxa7241 15y ago
Then what does justify behaviour? Ethics is grounded in physical reality, that is sort-of where the buck stops -- at least it seems a better place than anywhere else. Surely an ethical evalution of an act depends on what the act is. What makes an act bad? If, for example, you say stealing is bad, and are asked why, you can reply that someone loses something -- they could do things with it before, but no longer can. There is a sense of harm, in basic physical terms that we can all pretty much agree upon, simply because we all share the same basic physical condition. But what if it were possible to steal something without taking anything away from someone -- i.e. the basic physical effect is different. Is that still bad? In what way could it be? You could just institute a rule proscribing such an act anyway, and so breaking the rule might seem bad superficially. But that would be like ruling that no-one can go out in the sun on wednesdays -- surely at some point someone will ask why. And there would not seem to be a good answer. That is the way copying is different from taking. Because, at bottom, it does not do anything harmful, and is in fact positive. And that is why people are probably likely to have some underlying sense that copying is morally OK.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  > And there would not seem to be a good answer. Sure there will, but it depends on whether you are empathetic to the condition of other human beings. A small software vendor sells their product. In effect, they're saying, either pay for a piece of software, or do without it. I could violate that contract, but then I'd be an asshole, because they asked for payment, yet I went and took it without paying. I wish to treat other human beings with respect, especially creators. I may hate copyright, but that doesn't mean I take it out on creators. Their works enrich my life in ways I never would have imagined, and I'm pleased to be able to support them. Jason Fried of 37Signals had a quote recently where he mentioned that, in the case of good products, people are happy to pay for them.

rick888 15y ago

"Because the item is a copy, and (digital) copies actually do cost nothing. That is just the physical fact, and people will always have some underlying sense of it -- as they should." So why don't people have the same mindset about currency? It's just ink and paper that represents a perceived value...very similar to the way digital items work. How about art? It's just paint and paper. Digital copies may cost nothing, but the original usually costs thousands of man-hours and or lots of money. "The idea that you should not be allowed to make copies, but must pay for them, is very unnatural" In the programming community, it seems only unnatural when it involves proprietary software. If a company uses GNU software without giving back to the community (the currency involved with OSS), people here want heads to roll. Just look at any discussion here in HN that involved the thesis theme. Many, many people called him a "thief" and that he "stole" code from Wordpress. In reality, nothing was "stolen" (using your logic). Your mindset will eventually cause the following: 1) Developer wages will decrease over time 2) Most companies will just have a web service as opposed to an app. It means you will be paying a monthly fee for software and it will cost more to the end-user in the long-run.

mdda 15y ago

Isn't that why Software-as-a-Service is much more palatable to a purchaser? It feels like your company is actually doing something for the money spent. If you were to sell the software as a download, people would demand lower prices, since 'after all' they're doing all the work (and hosting is cheap). It's an interesting dichotomy.